GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, July 25, the 206th day of 2018 with 159 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:28 and sunset is @ 8:12. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury & Saturn. The evening stars are Neptune, Uranus & Venus.
ON THIS DAY IN: 0326 – Constantine refused to carry out the traditional pagan sacrifices.
1394 – Charles VI of France issued a decree for the general expulsion of Jews from France.
1564 – Maximillian II became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1587 – Japanese strong-man Hideyoshi banned Christianity in Japan and ordered all Christians to leave.
1593 – France’s King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.
1759 – British forces defeated a French army at Fort Niagara in Canada.
1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Ottomans at Aboukir, Egypt.
1805 – Aaron Burr visited New Orleans with plans to establish a new country, with New Orleans as the capital city.
1845 – China granted Belgium equal trading rights with Britain, France and the United States.
1850 – In Worcester, MA, Harvard and Yale University freshmen met in the first intercollegiate billiards match.
1850 – Gold was discovered in the Rogue River in OR.
1854 – The paper collar was patented by Walter Hunt.
1861 – The Crittenden Resolution, which called for the American Civil War to be fought to preserve the Union and not for slavery, was passed by the U.S. Congress.
1866 – Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army. He was the first American officer to hold the rank.
1868 – The U.S. Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.
1871 – Seth Wheeler patented perforated wrapping paper.
1907 – Korea became a protectorate of Japan.
1909 – French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel in a monoplane. He traveled from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes. He was the first man to fly across the channel.
1914 – Russia declared that it would act to protect Serbian sovereignty.
1924 – Greece announced the deportation of 50,000 Armenians.
1939 – W2XBS TV in New York City presented the first musical comedy seen on TV. The show was “Topsy and Eva.”
1941 – The U.S. government froze all Japanese and Chinese assets.
1943 – Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown in a coup.
1946 – The U.S. detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It was the first underwater test of the device.
1946 – Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis staged their first show as a team at Club 500 in Atlantic City, NJ.
1947 – Fortune Gordien of Oslo, Norway set a world record discus throw of 178.47 feet.
1952 – Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the U.S.
1978 – Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born in Oldham, England. She had been conceived through in-vitro fertilization.
1978 – Pete Rose (Cincinnati Red) broke the National League record for consecutive base hits as he got a hit in 38 straight games.
1984 – Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She was aboard the orbiting space station Salyut 7.
1987 – The Salt Lake City Trappers set a professional baseball record as the team won its 29th game in a row. (Utah)
1994 – Israel and Jordan formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948.
1997 – K.R. Narayanan became India’s president. He was the first member of the Dalits caste to do so.
1998 – The USS Harry S. Truman was commissioned and put into service by the U.S. Navy.
1999 – Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France. He was only the second American to win the race.
2010 – WikiLeaks leaked to the public more than 90,000 internal reports involving the U.S.-led War in Afghanistan from 2004-2010.
2016 – Verizon Communications agreed to purchase Yahoo!’s operating business for $4.83 billion with the intention to merge it with AOL.