GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS TUESDAY, February 17, the 47th day of 2015 with 317 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:39 and sunset is @ 5:17. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, Mercury, & Saturn. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1621 – Miles Standish became a military captain.

1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral college tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson as the third President and Burr as Vice President.
1816 – A street in Baltimore became the first to be lit with gas from America’s first gas company.
1864 – The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor,South Carolina.
1865 – South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, was destroyed by fire as Major General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through.
1897 – The forerunner of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), the National Congress of Mothers, was founded in Washington.
1933 – “Newsweek” was first published.
1938 – The first color television was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London.
1947 – The Voice of America (VOA) began radio broadcasts.
1968 – The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opened in Springfield, Massachusetts.
1972 – President Richard Nixon departed on his historic trip to China.
1979 – In response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China launched an invasion of Vietnam.
1979 – “A Prairie Home Companion” debuted on National Public Radio.
2002 – Microsoft released Windows 2000.