Today In History; January 4

January 4, 2014

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Good Morning & God Bless To Everyone !!!

Today is January 4, the 4th day of 2014 and there are 361 days left this year where it is another blessed day in the work for our Lord here at:

For God’s Glory Alone Ministries !!!

Another beautiful day this morning where we are getting hit with 16 degrees but there’s no windchill this morning. We’re expecting highs in the mid to upper 50’s which is pretty nice considering how much of the country is getting hammered with extremely low temps and snow. We have no reason to complain here in Albuquerque as we’re also expecting another day of God’s glorious sunshine, although it’s expected to drop here a bit tomorrow as well.

We continue prayers today please for Pastor Franks in his battle with a really bad infection. Please raise him and his family in your prayers today please. Pastor Dewey’s Reno continues to improve and I’m getting nothing but good reports from the Pastor on his condition. It was a pretty intensive surgery he had though and healing continues.

So, What Happened Today In 1964:

Boston Strangler Strikes Again; But For The Last Time

Mary Sullivan is raped & strangled to death in her Boston apartment. The killer left a card reading “Happy New Year” leaning against her foot. Sullivan would turn out to be the last woman killed by the notorious Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who had terrorized the city between 1962 & 1964, raping & killing 13 women.

DeSalvo’s serial-killing career was shaped at an early age. His father would bring home prostitutes & have sex with them in front of the family, before brutally beating his wife & children. On one occasion, DeSalvo’s father knocked out his mother’s teeth & then broke her fingers one by one while she lay unconscious on the floor. DeSalvo himself was sold by his father to work as a farm laborer, along with two of his sisters.

In the late 1950s, as a young man, DeSalvo acquired the first of his criminal nicknames. He knocked on the doors of young women, claiming to represent a modeling agency. He told the women that he needed to take their measurements and proceeded to crudely fondle the women as he used his tape measure. His stint as the “Measuring Man” came to an end with his arrest on March 17, 1960, & he spent nearly a year in prison.

When DeSalvo was released, his next series of crimes were far worse. For nearly two years, he broke into hundreds of apartments in New England, tied up the women & sexually assaulted them. He always wore green handyman clothes during his assaults & became known as the “Green Man.”

In 1962, DeSalvo started killing his victims. He strangled Anna Slesers with her own housecoat & tied the ends in a bow, which would become his trademark. Throughout the summer of 1962, DeSalvo raped & killed elderly women in Boston. However, by winter he began attacking younger women, always leaving the rope or cord used to strangle the victim in a bow.

Police, who were stymied in their attempts to stop the newly dubbed “Boston Strangler,” even brought in a psychic to inspect the clothes of the victims. However, it was DeSalvo himself who enabled the police to close the case. On October 27, 1964, after raping another young woman, he suddenly stopped before killing her. When the victim called police and gave a description of her attacker, police arrested DeSalvo.

DeSalvo confessed the murders to his cellmate George Nasser. Nasser told his attorney, F. Lee Bailey, about DeSalvo, & Baile took on DeSalvo as a client. Under a deal with prosecutors, DeSalvo never was charged or convicted with the Boston Strangler murders, getting a life sentence instead for the Green Man rapes. Still, DeSalvo’s life term was short. He was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow inmate at Walpole State Prison on November 26, 1973.

Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On January 4 In History:

1493 – Christopher Columbus left the New World on return from the 1st voyage;

1754 – Columbia University is founded as Kings College in New York City;

1762 – England declares war on Spain & Naples;

1790 – President George Washington delivers the 1st “State of the Union” Address;

1796 – U.S. House of Representatives accepts the colors, or flag, of the French Revolutionary Republic, proclaiming it the most honorable testimonial of the existing sympathies & affections of the two Republics;

1847 – Samuel Colt sells his 1st revolver pistol to the United States government;

1863 – In the Civil War, Confederate General Roger Weightman Hansen dies at the age of 35 at Murfreesboro Tennessee as a result of wounds received two days earlier at the Battle of Stone River Tennessee;

1885 – Doctor W W Grant of Iowa performs 1st appendectomy on 22-year-old Mary Gartside;

1896 – Utah territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state;

1915 – 1st elected Jewish Governor, Moses Alexander, takes office in Idaho;

1926 – Theodorus Pangalos resigns as Greek dictator;

1944 – In WWII, U.S. aircraft begin dropping supplies to guerrilla forces throughout Western Europe. The action demonstrated that the U.S. believed guerrillas were a vital support to the allies in their battle against the Axis powers;

1950 – The God That Failed, a collection of essays by six writers & intellectuals who either joined or sympathized with the communist cause before renouncing the ideology, is published by Harpers. The book provided interesting insight into why communism originally appealed to, & then disappointed, so many adherents in the United States & Europe, particularly during the 1920s & 1930s;

1951 – UN forces abandon Seoul Korea to the Chinese Communist Army;

1952- The French army in Indochina launches Operation Nenuphar in hopes of ejecting a Viet Minh division from the Ba Tai Forest;

1965 – Poet T.S. Eliot dies in London at the age of 76. In 1948 he was bestowed The Order of Merit by King George VI & in the same year was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature;

1965 – In his State of the Union message, President Lyndon B Johnson reaffirms U.S. commitment to support South Vietnam in fighting communist aggression. In justifying the continued support to Saigon, Johnson pointed out that U.S. presidents had been giving the South Vietnamese help for 10 years, & he said, “Our own security is tied to the peace of Asia”;

1965 – In the same State of the Union address, President Lyndon B Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed to achieve his plan for a Great Society. On the heels of John F Kennedy’s tragic death, Americans had elected Johnson, his vice president, to the presidency by the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. Johnson used this mandate to push for improvements he believed would better Americans’ quality of life;

1972 – Rose Heilborn becomes the 1st female judge to sit at the “Old Bailey” in London England;

1974 – President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings & documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Marking the beginning of the end of his Presidency, Nixon would resign from office in disgrace eight months later;

1974 – South Vietnamese troops report that 55 soldiers have been killed in two clashes with communist forces. Claiming that the war had “restarted,” South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu asserted, “We cannot allow the communists a situation in which…they can launch harassing attacks against us,” 7 ordered his forces to launch a counter-offensive to retake lost territory. The announcement essentially marked the end of attempts to adhere to the agreements of the Paris Peace Accords;

1975 – The Khmer Rouge launches its newest assault in its 5-year war in Phnom Penh. The war in Cambodia would go on until the spring of 1975;

1980 – President Jimmy Carter announces U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics;

1990 – Two trains collide in Sangi Pakistan killing between 200 & 300 people & injuring an estimated 700 others;

1995 – The 104th Congress becomes the 1st held entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era. Thanks to Newt Gingrich & his “Contract with America”, the party won majority control on Congress for the 1st time in 40 years;

1999 – For the first time since Charlemagne’s reign in the ninth century, Europe is united with a common currency when the “euro” debuts as a financial unit in corporate & investment markets. Eleven European Union (EU) nations (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal & Spain), representing some 290 million people, launched the currency in the hopes of increasing European integration & economic growth;

2007 – Representative Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., becomes 1st female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives;

2010 – Burj Khalifa, (Khalifa Tower), officially opens in Dubai UAE. At 2,722 feet in height, it is the tallest man-made structure in the world;

2013 – It was one year ago today!

Now, Off To The Fun Stuff:

Today’s Quote Of The Day:

“May your home be a place where Friends meet, Family gathers, Love grows & Love for our Lord Overflows” – Rick Stambaugh, 1/4/2014

Today’s Word Of The Day:

Bilk – is a transitive verb which means to cheat, to elude or to evade payment. It can also be used as a noun, where it means either a person who cheats or the cheat itself.

Today’s Sign Of The Times:

Today’s Joke Of The Day:

“A new report says that members of Congress work harder than the average American. You know why? – That’s because thanks to Congress, the average American is out of work.” – Jay Leno

Today’s Cutest Faces: