GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, February 25, the 56th day of 2015 with 309 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:27 and sunset is @ 5:27. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, & Saturn. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.
ON THIS DAY IN: 1570 – Pope Pius the Fifth excommunicated England’s Queen Elizabeth I.1601 – Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex and former favorite of Elizabeth I, was beheaded in the Tower of London for high treason.
1779 – The British surrendered the Illinois country to Lieutenant George Rogers Clark at Vincennes, Indiana.
1793 – President George Washington held the first Cabinet meeting.
1836 – Samuel Colt patented his revolver.
1901 – United States Steel Corporation was incorporated by J.P. Morgan.
1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, authorizing the income tax, went into effect.
1919 – Oregon became the first state to tax gasoline.
1950 – “Your Show of Shows” starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morrisdebuted on TV.
1964 – Cassius Clay dethroned world heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round technical knockout. Clay then announced his conversion to Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Ali.
1976 – U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban the hiring of illegal aliens.
1986 – President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquinoassumed the presidency.
1988 – American televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God for one year after it became known that he had visited a prostitute for three years.
2005 – Dennis Rader was arrested near his home for the BTK serial killings that terrorized Wichita, Kansas between 1974 and 1991.
2006 – The world’s estimated population reaches 6.5 billion.