GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS TUESDAY, May 19, the 139th day of 2015 with 226 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:19 and sunset is @ 8:02. 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: 1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail for North America.
1588 – The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish invasion army to Britain from the Netherlands.
1602 – Martha’s Vineyard was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.
1643 – The Confederation of New England was formed by Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay.
1649 – England was declared a Commonwealth.
1749 – King George II of England granted the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land on the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by colonists from Virginia; this directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754.
1780 – Midday near-total darkness struck New England. No scientific explanation was ever verified.
1846 – The first steamship arrived in Hawaii.
1884 – The Ringling Brothers Circus first performed.
1898 – Postcards were first authorized by the U.S. Post Office.
1900 – The world’s longest railroad tunnel, the 12-mile-long Simplon Tunnel linking Switzerland to Italy through the Alps, opened.
1906 – The Federated Boys’ Clubs organization, forerunner of the Boys’ Clubs of America, was established.
1914 – The Greyhound Bus Company was founded.
1935 – The National Football League adopted an annual college draft to begin in 1936.
1958 – The United States and Canada formally established the North American Air Defense Command.
1967 – The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear weapons from outer space.
1996 – A large asteroid came within 281,000 miles of the Earth.
2005 – “Revenge of the Sith,” the final chapter of the “Star Wars” adventure series, opened in movie theaters.