GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS FRIDAY, November 16, the 320th day of 2018 with 45 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:35 and sunset is @ 4:21. 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: 1776 – British troops captured Fort Washington during the American Revolution.
1885 – Canadian rebel Louis Riel was executed for high treason.
1907 – Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state.
1915 – Coca-Cola had its prototype for a contoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.
1933 – The United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations for the first time.
1952 – In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy first held a football for Charlie Brown.
1957 – Jim Brown (Cleveland Browns) set an NFL season rushing record of 1163 yards after only eight games.
1966 – Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he had murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954.
1969 – The U.S. Army announced that several had been charged with massacre and the subsequent cover-up in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam on March 16, 1968.
1973 – Skylab 3 carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on an 84-day mission.
1973 – U.S. President Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.
1981 – A vaccine for hepatitis B was approved. The vaccine had been developed at Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research.
1982 – An agreement was announced on the 57th day of a strike by National Football League (NFL) players.
1985 – Colonel Oliver North was put in charge of the shipment of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
1988 – Estonia’s parliament declared that the Baltic republic “sovereign,” but stopped short of complete independence.
1994 – Major League Soccer announced that it would start its inaugural season in 1996.
1997 – China released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident from jail for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for almost 18 years.
1998 – In Burlington, WIsconsin, five high school students, aged 15 to 16, were arrested in an alleged plot to kill a carefully selected group of teachers and students.
1998 – It was announced that Monica Lewinsky had signed a deal for the North American rights to a book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton.
1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court said that union members could file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.
1999 – Johnny Depp received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1999 – Chrica Adams, the pregnant girlfriend of Rae Carruth, was shot four times in her car. She died a month later from her wounds. The baby survived. Carruth was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years and 11 months in prison for his role in the murder.
2000 – Bill Clinton became the first serving U.S. president to visit Communist Vietnam.
2001 – The movie “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” opened in the U.S. and U.K.
2004 – A NASA unmanned “scramjet” (X-43A) reached a speed of nearly 10 times the speed of sound above the Pacific Ocean.