GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, March 11, the 70th day of 2015 with 295 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 7:04 and sunset is @ 6:44. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, & Saturn. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1779 – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was established.

1824 – The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

1861 – The Confederate convention in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a constitution.

1865 – In the Civil War, General William T. Sherman captured the town of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

1888 – The famous “Blizzard of ’88” hit the northeastern United States with approximately 40 inches of snow; around 400 people died.

1930 – President Howard Taft became the first U.S. President to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

1941 – President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis Powers.

1942 – In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia as Japanese forces advanced, vowing “I shall return.”

1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko.

1990 – Lithuania proclaimed its independence from the USSR, the first Soviet republic to do so.

1990 – American tennis player Jennifer Capriati, aged 13, became the youngest-ever finalist in a professional contest.

2004 – Spain is the victim of terrorists when at least 10 bombs explode on four commuter trains in Madrid during rush hour, killing 202 people and wounding more than 2,000. An Arabic newspaper reports it received a fax alleging that al-Qaeda was behind the attack.