GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS SUNDAY, April 17, the 108th day day of 2016 with 258 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:59 and sunset is @ 7:27. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Neptune, Uranus & Venus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury & Saturn.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1492 – Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain to find a passage to Asia and the Indies. 

1521 – Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. 

1524 – New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano. 

1535 – Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain. 

1629 – Horses were first imported into the colonies by the American Massachusetts Bay Colony. 

1704 – John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston “News-Letter.” 

1758 – Frances Williams published a collection of Latin poems. He was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere. 

1808 – Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships. 

1810 – Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton. 

1824 – Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54′ 40′. 

1860 – New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses. 

1861 – Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union. 

1864 – U.S. Civil War General Grant banned the trading of prisoners. 

1865 – Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. 

1875 – The game “snooker” was invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain. 

1895 – China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It was the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the treaty China ceded Taiwan to Japan. 

1916 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters obtained a charter from the U.S. Congress. 

1917 – A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later. 

1935 – “Lights Out” debuted on NBC Radio. It ran until 1952. 

1941 – Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT. 

1941 – The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing. 

1946 – The last French troops left Syria. 

1947 – Jackie Robinson (Brooklyn Dodgers) performed a bunt for his first major league hit. 

1961 – About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack. 

1964 – Jerrie Mock became first woman to fly an airplane solo around the world. 

1964 – The Ford Motor Company unveiled its new Mustang model. 

1967 – “The Joey Bishop Show” debuted on ABC-TV. 

1967 – The U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali’s request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army. 

1969 – In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 

1969 – Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed. 

1970 – Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely after an on-board accident with an oxygen tank. 

1975 – Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was the end of the five-year war. 

1983 – In Warsaw, police routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters. 

1983 – In New York, a transit strike that began on March 7 ended. 

19840 – In London, demonstrators outside the Libyan Embassy were fired upon from someone inside. Eleven people were injured and an English Police woman was killed. 

1985 – The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new 22-cent, “LOVE” stamp. 

1985 – In Lebanon, the cabinet resigned as Shiites took W. Beirut. 

1987 – In Sri Lanka, Tamil guerrillas killed 122 people in a road ambush. 

1989 – In Poland, courts gave Solidarity legal status. 

1993 – A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted. 

1996 – Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents. 

1999 – In India, the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee collapsed after losing a vote of confidence. 

2002 – At the National Maritime Museum in London, the exhibit “Skin Deep – A History of Tattooing” opened.