GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS SATURDAY, May 09, the 129th day of 2015 with 236 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:29 and sunset is @ 7:51. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, Neptune & Saturn. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1502 – Christopher Columbus left Spain on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere.

1754 – The first cartoon was published, in Benjamin Franklin’s “Pennsylvania Gazette.”

1813 – General William Henry Harrison turned back a siege of Fort Meigs by Shawnee military leader Tecumseh and British general Henry A. Proctor.

1913 – The 17th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, providing for the election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than selection by state legislatures, was ratified.

1914 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation for the celebration of Mother’s Day.

1926 – Polar explorer Richard E. Byrd and co-pilot Floyd Bennett announced that they were the first to fly over the North Pole; this claim has been debated, however.

1955 – West Germany was admitted as a member of NATO.

1960 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a birth-control pill.

1961 – Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow condemned television programming as a “vast wasteland” in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.

1988 – The new Australian Parliament House opens in Canberra.

1994 – South Africa’s newly-elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is selected as the successor of Pope John Paul II.

2006 – Estonia ratifies the European Constitution.