GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS FRIDAY, May 01, the 121st day of 2015 with 244 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:40 and sunset is @ 7:42. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, Neptune & Saturn. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1707 – The Union of England and Scotland was proclaimed.

1851 – The Great Exhibition opened to wide acclaim in the Crystal Palace in London, showcasing technological wonders from around the world.

1883 – Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody) staged his first Wild West Show.

1884 – The first skyscraper in America began construction: a 10-story building on the corner of LaSalle and Adams in Chicago, Illinois.

1898 – Commodore George Dewey commanded, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” as a U.S. naval force decimated a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

1941 – The film “Citizen Kane,” directed by and starring Orson Welles, opened in New York.

1948 – The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.

1960 – The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

1961 – Fidel Castro announced there would be no more elections in Cuba.

1963 – James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.

1967 – Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas.

1971 – Amtrak — which combined and streamlined the operations of 18 intercity passenger railroads — went into service.

1997 – After 18 years of Conservative rule, Tony Blair and the Labour Party accomplished a landslide victory in British parliamentary elections.

1999 – The Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury space capsule flown by Gus Grissom, was found in theAtlantic Ocean 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral, 38 years after it sank.

2001 – Thomas Blanton, Jr. became the second ex-Ku Klux Klansman to be convicted in the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four black girls.