GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS THURSDAY, July 2, the 183rd day of 2015 with 182 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:11 and sunset is @ 8:25. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Neptune & Uranus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1776 – The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States.”

1777 – Vermont became the first American colony to abolish slavery.

1788 – The Constitution of the United States of America went into effect after nine states ratified it.

1839 – Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rose up against their captors, killing two crew members and seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Príncipe, Cuba.

1850 – The gas mask was patented by B.J. Lane of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1857 – New York City’s first elevated railroad opened for business.

1881 – Only four months into his administration, President James A. Garfield was shot at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot in Washington, D.C.; he died in September from his wounds.

1890 – Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1900 – Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin successfully demonstrated the world’s first rigid airship.

1900 – The second modern Olympic Games opened in Paris.

1926 – The United States Army Air Corps was created.

1937 – Aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.

1947 – A purported Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. This report has been the subject of controversy ever since.

1955 – “The Lawrence Welk Show” premiered on television.

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964; it was sweeping legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in employment and education, and outlawing racial segregation in public facilities.

1976 – The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

2000 – Vicente Fox Quesada is the first President of Mexico elected from an opposition party since 1920.

2002 – American Steve Fossett became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world.