Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is February 20, the 51st day of 2014 and there are 314 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 !!!
I was just going to put a short note in this morning concerning negative thoughts. If we hang onto our negative thoughts, what result will we reach – negative in ____ out! Negative thoughts are a tool of Satan. When suffering from negative thoughts, as hard as it may seem, ask for God’s help which is where positive thoughts originate and He will ensure your mind path is corrected if you just stay with Him! I’ve been pondering this throughout the night for reasons I need not go into here, but no sooner did I open up the website this morning and there is a post from our Very Dear Friend Shari Johnson who writes for us here at FGGAM. It’s so very closely aligned with my thoughts through the night. I’m attaching her post and highly recommend a look; it’s a mighty, mighty good read: ‘I can do it – He’s got ya!’ – https://fggam.org/yes-please-another-helping-of-self-doubt/
So, What Happened Today In 1962 ?
John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth
From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.
Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he flew nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes.
Glenn was preceded in space by two Americans, Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, and two Soviets, Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov. In April 1961, Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft Vostok 1 made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, Shepard was launched into space aboard Freedom 7 on a suborbital flight. In July, Grissom made another brief suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7. In August, with the Americans still having failed to make an orbital flight, the Russians sprinted further ahead in the space race when Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived.
It was with this responsibility in mind that John Glenn lifted off from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 9:47 a.m. on February 20, 1962. Some 100,000 spectators watched on the ground nearby and millions more saw it on television. After separating from its launching rocket, the bell-shaped Friendship 7 capsule entered into an orbit around Earth at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour. Smoothing into orbit, Glenn radioed back, “Capsule is turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous.”
During Friendship 7‘s first orbit, Glenn noticed what he described as small, glowing fireflies drifting by the capsule’s tiny window. It was some time later that NASA mission control determined that the sparks were crystallized water vapor released by the capsule’s air-conditioning system. Before the end of the first orbit, a more serious problem occurred when Friendship 7‘s automatic control system began to malfunction, sending the capsule into erratic movements. At the end of the orbit, Glenn switched to manual control and regained command of the craft.
Toward the end of Glenn’s third and last orbit, mission control received a mechanical signal from the spacecraft indicating that the heat shield on the base of the capsule was possibly loose. Traveling at its immense speed, the capsule would be incinerated if the shield failed to absorb and dissipate the extremely high reentry temperatures. It was decided that the craft’s retrorockets, usually jettisoned before reentry, would be left on in order to better secure the heat shield. Less than a minute later, Friendship 7 slammed into Earth’s atmosphere.
During Glenn’s fiery descent back to Earth, the straps holding the retrorockets gave way and flapped violently by his window as a shroud of ions caused by excessive friction enveloped the spacecraft, causing Glenn to lose radio contact with mission control. As mission control anxiously waited for the resumption of radio transmissions that would indicate Glenn’s survival, he watched flaming chunks of retrorocket fly by his window. After four minutes of radio silence, Glenn’s voice crackled through loudspeakers at mission control, and Friendship 7 splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. He was picked up by the USS destroyer Noa, and his first words upon stepping out of the capsule and onto the deck of the Noa were, “It was hot in there.” He had spent nearly five hours in space.
Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. He later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the “Clean Marine” in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president.
In early 1998, NASA announced it had approved Glenn to serve as a payload specialist on the space shuttle Discovery. On October 29, 1998, nearly four decades after his famous orbital flight, the 77-year-old Glenn became the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging. In 1999, he retired from his U.S. Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the state of Ohio.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On February 20 In History:
1472 – The Orkney and Shetland Islands are left to Scotland by Norway as a result of a dowry payment;
1513 – Pope Julius II dies. He will lay in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo;
1725 – In the American colonies, a posse of New Hampshire volunteers comes across a band of encamped Native Americans and takes 10 “scalps” in the first significant appropriation of this Native American practice by European colonists. Although the custom of “scalping” was once practiced in Europe and Asia, it is generally associated with North American native groups. In their early wars with Native Americans, European colonists of North America retaliated against hostile native groups by adopting their practice of scalp taking;
1792 – President George Washington signs legislation renewing the United States Post Office as a cabinet department led by the postmaster general, guaranteeing inexpensive delivery of all newspapers, stipulating the right to privacy and granting Congress the ability to expand postal service to new areas of the nation;
1809 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state in the Union and therefore no state legislature could annul the judgments or determine the jurisdictions of federal courts;
1835 – Concepcion, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake killing an estimated 5,000 people;
1839 – Congress prohibits dueling in the District of Columbia;
1862 – William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever;
1864 – In the American Civil War, at the Battle of Olustee, the largest conflict fought in Florida during the Civil War, a Confederate force under General Joseph Finegan decisively defeats an army commanded by General Truman Seymour. The victory kept the Confederates in control of Florida’s interior for the rest of the war;
1907 – President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the United States;
1918 – The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. (Looks like their about to get it again, but this time without having to take military action(!);
1919 – In World War I, Amir Habibullah Khan, the leader of Afghanistan who struggled to keep his country neutral in war in the face of strong internal support for Turkey and the Central Powers, is shot and killed while on a hunting trip on this day in 1919;
1927 – Golfers in South Carolina are arrested for violating the Sabbath;
1942 – In World War II, Lt. Edward O’Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul-and minutes later becomes America’s first flying ace;
1944 – During World War II, U.S. strategic bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as “Big Week”;
1944 – Batman and Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers;
1947 – A chemical mixing error causes explosion that destroys 42 blocks in Los Angeles;
1950 – The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Rabinowitz, ruled 5-3 that authorities making a lawful arrest did not need a warrant to search and seize evidence in an area that was in the “immediate and complete control” of the suspect;
1968 – During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins hearings to investigate American policy in Vietnam. This was a direct result of the Tet Offensive, in which Viet Cong forces, supported by large numbers of North Vietnamese troops, launched the largest and best-coordinated offensive of the war. During the attack, the Viet Cong drove into the center of South Vietnam’s seven largest cities and attacked 30 provincial capitals ranging from the Delta to the DMZ. Militarily, Tet was decidedly an Allied victory, but psychologically and politically, it was a disaster. The offensive had indeed been a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but the size and scope of the communist attacks had caught the American and South Vietnamese allies completely by surprise. Eventually the Tet Offensive and the subsequent congressional reaction helped convince Johnson, who was frustrated with his inability to reach a solution in Vietnam, to announce that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of his party for president;
1985 – In a highly controversial vote on February 20, 1985, the Irish government defies the powerful Catholic Church and approves the sale of contraceptives. A coalition of the Fine Gael and Labour parties defeated the opposition of the conservative Fianna Fail party by an 83-80 vote. The new legislation made non-medical contraceptives (condoms and spermicides) available without prescriptions to people over 18 at pharmacies; it also allowed for the distribution of these contraceptives at doctors’ offices, hospitals and family planning clinics. Though it was still illegal to advertise contraceptives and use of the birth control pill remained restricted, the vote marked a major turning point in Irish history–the first-ever defeat of the Catholic Church in a head-to-head battle with the government on social legislation;
1986 – Attempts to dig a channel tunnel between Britain and France date back to 1883, and Napoleon drew blueprints for a tunnel in 1802. Yet not until February 20, 1986, were France and Britain able to announce that a tunnel would soon become a reality. Trains, cars and buses would be able to speed through the tunnel in less than half an hour. Construction began in December 1987 and the “chunnel” was finally completed in 1994;
2003 – A fire at a rock concert in a West Warwick, Rhode Island, nightclub kills 100 people and seriously injures almost 200 more on this day in 2003. It was the deadliest such fire in the United States since 165 people were killed at the Beverly Hill Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky in 1977;
2004 – Bypassing angry Senate Democrats, President George W. Bush installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor as a U.S. appeals court judge in his second “recess appointment” of a controversial nominee in five weeks;
2009 – President Barack Obama warned a gathering of mayors at the White House that he would “call them out” if they wasted the money from his massive economic stimulus plan. (Really(?) – Writer is just going to keep his mouth shut here!!!);
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY !
Now, Off To The Fun Stuff !
Today’s ‘It’s Just An Observation’:
Capital is mobile. It goes where it is welcomed and stays where it is well-treated, so states compete to create tax and regulatory environments conducive to job creation. Liberals call this a ‘race to the bottom.’ Conservatives call it a race to rationality.
Today’s 2nd ‘It’s Just An Observation’ (from columnist Burt Prelutsky):
“The real middle class doesn’t just have a financial identity. In spite of what liberals will tell you, it’s also a way of life. It consists in part in education and learning a skill — whether the end result is a brain surgeon or a plumber — being law-abiding, forsaking illegal drugs and not having babies until you’re married and can afford to raise them. In addition, members of the middle class tend to be patriotic, not out of chauvinism, but because they sincerely believe in the exceptional nature of the nation founded by the extraordinary likes of Washington, Madison and Jefferson.”
Today’s AWE of GOD Picture:
Today’s Patriotic Quote:
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
– President Gerald R. Ford
Today’s Thought For The Day:
“I’ve always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development.”
– Alice Roosevelt Longworth, former first daughter (born 1884, died this date in 1980)
Today’s ‘I Fixed It For You Honey’:
Today’s Fact Of The Day:
While in the White House, President Rutherford Hayes banished alcohol from the premises and held gospel sing-alongs every night.
Today’s Trivia:
Tuna fish swim at an average speed of 9 miles per hour. They also never stop moving.
Today’s ‘Should I Worry’:
Today’s Word Of The Day:
Machinate v. Engage in plots and intrigues; scheming. “To machinate the overthrow of the government.”
Today’s Funny Animals Video:
Balancing Goats – https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=58-atNakMWw
Today’s ‘Let’s Be Friends’:
Today’s Product Warning Label:
On a chainsaw – Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands.
Today’s Lexophile Word Play:
Those who get too big for their pants will be exposed in the end.
Today’s ‘It’s A Dog’s Life’:
Today’s Joke Of The Day:
The inscription on the metal bands used by the U.S. Department of the interior to tag migratory birds has been changed.
The bands used to bear the address of the Washington Biological Survey, abbreviated: “Wash. Biol. Surv.”
Then, the agency received a letter from an Arkansas camper:
“Dear Sirs, while camping last week I shot one of your birds.
I think it was a crow.
I followed the cooking instructions on the leg tag and I want to tell you, it was horrible.”
The bands are now marked ‘Fish and Wildlife Service’.
Today’s Funny Picture:
Today’s Inspirational Thought:
Laughing is good exercise. It’s like jogging on the inside.
Today’s Inspirational Music Video:
Praise You In This Storm – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2rLXr3cEU&list=PL8C6673F648B9CC05&feature=player_detailpage
Today’s Verse & Prayer:
Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.
– Proverbs 17:9
Father God, I confess that I am often more a peace lover than a peacemaker. Give me the character not to repeat gossip and instead have the wisdom and strength to be an offense mender. In Jesus name I pray. Amen
Today’s Funny Church Sign:
Until Tomorrow – America, Bless God !!!
