GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS FRIDAY, March 24, the 83rd day of 2017 with 282 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:40 and sunset is @ 7:00. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, Saturn & Mercury. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.
ON THIS DAY IN: 1379 – The Gelderse war ended.
1545 – German Parliament opened in Worms.
1550 – France and England signed the Peace of Boulogne.
1629 – In Virginia, the first game law was passed in the American colonies.
1664 – A charter to colonize Rhode Island was granted to Roger Williams in London.
1720 – In Paris, banking houses closed due to financial crisis.
1765 – Britain passed the Quartering Act that required the American colonies to house 10,000 British troops in public and private buildings.
1792 – Benjamin West became the first American artist to be selected president of the Royal Academy of London.
1828 – The Philadelphia & Columbia Railway was authorized as the first state owned railway.
1832 – Mormon Joseph Smith was beaten, tarred and feathered in Ohio.
1837 – Canada gave blacks the right to vote
1848 – A state of siege was proclaimed in Amsterdam.
1868 – Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was formed.
1878 – The British frigate Eurydice sank killing 300.
1880 – The first “hail insurance company” was incorporated in Connecticut. It was known as Tobacco Growers’ Mutual Insurance Company.
1882 – In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the tuberculosis germ (bacillus).
1883 – The first telephone call between New York and Chicago took place.
1900 – Mayor Van Wyck of New York broke the ground for the New York subway tunnel that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1900 – In New Jersey, the Carnegie Steel Corporation was formed.
1904 – Vice Adm. Tojo sank seven Russian ships as the Japanese strengthened their blockade of Port Arthur.
1905 – In Crete, a group led by Eleutherios Venizelos claimed independence from Turkey.
1906 – In Mexico, the Tehuantepec Istmian Railroad opened as a rival to the Panama Canal.
1906 – The “Census of the British Empire” revealed that England ruled 1/5 of the world.
1911 – In Denmark, penal code reform abolished corporal punishment.
1920 – The first U.S. coast guard air station was established at Morehead City, NC.
1924 – Greece became a republic.
1927 – Chinese Communists seized Nanking and break with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist goals.
1932 – Belle Baker hosted a radio variety show from a moving train. It was the first radio broadcast from a train.
1934 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill granting future independence to the Philippines.
1938 – The U.S. asked that all countries help refugees fleeing from the Nazis.
1944 – In Rome, The Gestapo rounded up innocent Italians and shot them to death in response to a bomb attack that killed 32 German policemen. Over 300 civilians were executed.
1946 – The Soviet Union announced that it was withdrawing its troops from Iran.
1947 – The U.S. Congress proposed the limitation of the presidency to two terms.
1954 – Britain opened trade talks with Hungary.
1955 – Tennessee Williams’ play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” debuted on Broadway.
1955 – The first oil drill seagoing rig was put into service.
1960 – A U.S. appeals court ruled that the novel “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” was not obscene and could be sent through the mail.
1972 – Great Britain imposed direct rule over Northern Ireland.
1976 – The president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, was deposed by her country’s military.
1980 – In San Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was shot to death by gunmen as he celebrated Mass.
1980 – “Nightline” with Ted Koppel premiered.
1982 – Soviet leader Leonid L. Brezhnev stated that Russia was willing to resume border talks with China.
1985 – Thousands demonstrated in Madrid against the NATO presence in Spain.
1988 – Former national security aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter and businessmen Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim pled innocent to Iran-Contra charges.
1989 – The Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound after it ran aground.
1989 – The U.S. decided to send humanitarian aid to the Contras.
1990 – Indian troops left Sri Lanka.
1991 – The African nation of Benin held its first presidential elections in about 30 years.
1993 – In Israel, Ezer Weizman, an advocate of peace with neighboring Arab nations, was elected President.
1995 – Russian forces surrounded Achkoi-Martan. It was one of the few remaining strongholds of rebels in Chechenia.
1995 – The U.S. House of Representatives passed a welfare reform package that made the most changes in social programs since the New Deal.
1997 – The Australian parliament overturned the world’s first and only euthanasia law.
1998 – In Jonesboro, AR, two young boys open fire at students from woods near a school. Four students and a teacher were killed and 10 others were injured. The two boys were 11 and 13 years old cousins.
1998 – A former FBI agent said papers found in James Earl Ray’s car supports a conspiracy theory in the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
1999 – In Kenya, at least 31 people were killed when a passenger train derailed. Hundreds were injured.
1999 – NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina). The attacks marked the first time in its 50-year history that NATO attacked a sovereign country. The bombings were in response to Serbia’s refusal to sign a peace treaty with ethnic Albanians who were seeking independence for the province of Kosovo.
1999 – The 7-mile tunnel under Mont Blanc in France became an inferno after a truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire. At least 30 people were killed.
2001 – Apple Computer Inc’s operating system MAC OS X went on sale.
2002 – Thieves stole five 17th century paintings from the Frans Hals Museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem. The paintings were worth about $2.6 million. The paintings were works by Jan Steen, Cornelis Bega, Adriaan van Ostade and Cornelis Dusart.
2005 – The government of Kyrgyzstan collapsed after opposition protesters took over President Askar Akayev’s presidential compound and government offices.
2005 – Sandra Bullock received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2006 – In Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA announced a permanent cease-fire.
2014 – It was announced that the U.S. and its allies would exclude Russia from the G8 meeting and boycott a planned summit in Sochi in response to Russia’s takeover of Crimea.