GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS SUNDAY, May 15, the 136th day day of 2016 with 230 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:22 and sunset is @ 7:58. 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: 1602 – Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold. 

1614 – An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould. 

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law. 

1702 – The War of Spanish Succession began. 

1768 – Under the Treaty of Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa. 

1795 – Napoleon entered the Lombardian capital of Milan. 

1849 – Neapolitan troops entered Palermo, and were in possession of Sicily. 

1856 – Lyman Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” was born. 

1862 – The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. 

1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder. 

1918 – Regular airmail service between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, began under the direction of the Post Office Department, which later became the U.S. Postal Service. 

1926 – Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth were forced down in Alaska after a four-day flight over an icecap. Ice had begun to form on the dirigible Norge. 

1926 – The New York Rangers were officially granted a franchise in the NHL. The NHL also announced that Chicago and Detroit would be joining the league in November. 

1930 – Ellen Church became the first female flight attendant. 

1940 – Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the U.S. 

1941 – Joe DiMaggio began his historic major league baseball hitting streak of 56 games. 

1942 – Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles. 

1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence. 

1951 – AT&T became the first corporation to have one million stockholders. 

1957 – Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. 

1958 – Sputnik III, the first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union. 

1963 – The last Project Mercury space flight was launched. 

1964 – The Smothers Brothers, Dick and Tom, gave their first concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City. 

1970 – U.S. President Nixon appointed America’s first two female generals. 

1970 – Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, were killed when police opened fire during student protests. 

1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot. 

1975 – The merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. 

1980 – The first transcontinental balloon crossing of the United States took place. 

1983 – In Boston,MA, the Madison Hotel was destroyed by implosion. 

1988 – The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years. 

1990 – Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Doctor Gachet” was sold for $82.5 million. The sale set a new world record. 

1997 – The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station. 

1999 – The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin. 

2014 – The National September 11 Memorial Museum was dedicated in New York City.