Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is February 14, the 45th day of 2014 and there are 320 days left this year where it is another Blessed Day in the pleasure of our service for our Lord here at:
For God’s Glory Alone Ministries !!!
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone. I pray God has blessed each and every one of you with a loved one to share life here on God’s precious Earth as wonderful as mine! I am a very blessed man having met my beautiful Sandy 19 years ago this past January and we’ve shared a glorious marriage together for 18 years this upcoming April!
“If you can find a truly good wife, she is worth more than precious gems!”
– Proverbs 31:10 (TLB)I ask everyone to give a special prayer for all our service men and women separated from their families and loved ones today who will not be able to be home with those loved ones to celebrate the day together.
For today’s feature article, I am obviously obliged to consider the story of Valentine’s Day. There are quite a few fabled stories of its origin and I obviously can’t cover them all, so I’ve picked one which is considered one of the three top picks to provide you.
So, What Happened, (theoretically), Today In 278 ?
St. Valentine is beheaded in Rome
On February 14 around the year 278 A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed.
Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.
To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.
Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.”
For his great service, Valentine was named a saint after his death.
In truth, the exact origins and identity of St. Valentine are unclear. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.” One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.
Legends vary on how the martyr’s name became connected with romance. The date of his death may have become mingled with the Feast of Lupercalia, a pagan festival of love. On these occasions, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine’s Day.
Gradually, February 14 became a date for exchanging love messages, poems and simple gifts such as flowers.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On February 14 In History:
1349 – 2,000 Jews are burned at the stake in Strasbourg Germany;
1400 – The Deposed Richard II is murdered in Ponterfract Castle in Yorkshire, England;
1670 – Roman Catholic Emperor Leopold I chases Jews out of Vienna;
1778 – The American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France;
1779 – Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is murdered by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group;
1779 – A Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd at Kettle Creek, Georgia;
1797 – The Spanish fleet is destroyed by the British under Admiral Jervis (with Nelson in support) at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, off Portugal;
1859 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd State of the Union;
1864 – In the American Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman enters Meridian, Mississippi, during a winter campaign that served as a precursor to Sherman’s March to the Sea campaign in Georgia. This often-overlooked Mississippi campaign was the first attempt by the Union at total warfare, a strike aimed not just at military objectives but also at the will of the Southern people;
1867 – Sakichi Toyoda, whose textile machinery company spawned the Toyota Motor Corporation, is born in Japan. In 2008, Toyota surpassed the American auto giant General Motors (GM) to become the world’s largest automaker;
1884 – Future President Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die, only hours apart. Roosevelt was at work in the New York state legislature attempting to get a government reform bill passed when he was summoned home by his family. He returned home to find his mother, Mittie, had succumbed to typhoid fever. On the same day, his wife of four years, Alice Lee, died of Bright’s disease, a severe kidney ailment. Only two days before her death, Alice Lee had given birth to the couple’s daughter, Alice;
1886 – Destined to become one of the state’s major exports, the first trainload of oranges grown by southern California farmers leaves Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad;
1904 – William Rudolph, the so-called “Missouri Kid”, having already escaped once, is recaptured in Kansas and returned to Missouri again for trial. One year later, he was hanged with the same rope that his sidekick, George Collins, had previously been hung;
1912 – Arizona becomes the 48th State in the Union;
1919 – In a plenary session of the Versailles peace conference on this day in 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presents the draft of the covenant for the League of Nations prepared by a League commission that had been established two weeks earlier;
1920 – The League of Women Voters is formed in Chicago in celebration of the imminent ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote;
1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. of New York was formally renamed International Business Machines Corp., or IBM;
1929 – Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran;
1929 – Sir Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist when an accidental discovery led to one of the great developments of modern medicine on this day in 1929. Having left a plate of Staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, Fleming noticed that a mold that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria. He identified the mold as penicillium notatum, similar to the kind found on bread. Fleming introduced his mold by-product called penicillin to cure bacterial infections;
1943 – In World War II, German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war. Rommel determined that the weakest point in the Allied defensive line was at the Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide gap in Tunisia’s Dorsal Mountains. His first strike was repulsed, but with tank reinforcements, Rommel broke through on February 20, inflicting devastating casualties on the U.S. forces. The Americans withdrew from their position, leaving behind most of their equipment. More than 1,000 American soldiers were killed by Rommel’s offensive, and hundreds were taken prisoner. The United States had finally tasted defeat in battle;
1957 – The Georgia state senate outlaws interracial athletics;
1962 – In the Vietnam War, President John F. Kennedy authorizes U.S. military advisors in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. At a news conference, he said, “The training missions we have in South Vietnam have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are of course to fire back, but we have not sent combat troops in the generally understood sense of the word.” In effect, Kennedy was acknowledging that U.S. forces were involved in the fighting, but he wished to downplay any appearance of increased American involvement in the war. The next day former Vice President Nixon expressed hopes that President Kennedy would “step up the build-up and under no circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism”;
1970 – During the Vietnam War, despite an increasingly active antiwar movement, a Gallup Poll shows that a majority of those polled (55 percent) oppose an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Those that favored American withdrawal had risen from 21 percent, in a November poll, to 35 percent. President Nixon had taken office in January 1969 promising to bring the war to an end, but a year later the fighting continued and support for the president’s handling of the war had begun to slip significantly;
1979 – In Kabul, Muslims kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police;
1979 – Armed guerrillas attack the U.S. embassy in Tehran;
1989 – Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini charges that Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, is blasphemous and issues an edict (fatwa) calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie;
2000 – A series of tornadoes moves through southern Georgia, wreaking havoc and killing 18 people. The storm system that swept across the southeastern United States was highly unusual as winter tornadoes are quite rare. The tornadoes began to form in the early morning hours in Colquitt, Tift, Mitchell and Grady counties in Georgia. These rural counties, located about 200 miles south of Atlanta, reported at least five major twisters. In all, 18 people lost their lives, 200 were seriously injured and more than 350 homes were destroyed. In addition, many pecan orchards were wiped out, contributing to damages in excess of $25 million;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY !
Now, Off To The Fun Stuff !
Today’s Patriotic Quote:
“To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable consequences, I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly with the constitutional authority of the Federal Government.”
– Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States
Today’s Quote For The Day:
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”
– Thomas Merton
Today’s Dogs Thoughts:
Dear God: Is it on purpose that our Names are spelled the same, only in reverse?
Today’s Un-Interesting Fact:
There were 1,148 U.S. manufacturing establishments that produced chocolate and cocoa products in 2011, employing 35,538 people. California led the nation with 122 of these establishments, followed by Pennsylvania, with 109.
– Provided by American Fact Finder
Today’s Trivia:
Some Statistics about us Americans. Did you know that … 21% of us don’t make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
Today’s ‘I Fixed It For You Honey’:
Today’s Word Of The Day:
Canard n. A false or unfounded rumor or story. “The tabloid included some of Hollywood’s oldest canards.”
Today’s Lexophile Word Play:
When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
Today’s Picture Taken With Impeccable Timing:
Today’s Interesting Video:
Have your dog drive your donkey cart to market”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dowoYvd6S-Y
Today’s Internet Proverb:
A chat has nine lives.
Today’s Funny Photo:
Today’s Thought For The Day:
Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground.
Today’s Joke Of The Day:
A Sunday school teacher asked, ‘Johnny, do you think Noah did a lot of fishing when he was on the Ark ?’
‘No,’ replied Johnny. ‘How could he, with just two worms.’
Today’s ‘Love Is’ Picture:
Today’s Inspirational Music Video:
Steady My Heart – https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T0ip40j82ws
Today’s Verse & Prayer:
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you , so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
– John 13:34-35
Father of Compassion and God of all grace, I thank you for teaching me to love through the example of Jesus. May my words and actions reflect his love toward your people today, tomorrow, and until you bring us all home to you. In the name of Christ, my Great Example, I pray. Amen.
Today’s Funny Church Sign:
Until Tomorrow – America, BLESS GOD !!!
