Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 13, the 103rd day of 2014 and there are 262 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 !!!
A thought on the “Global Warming,” I mean “Climate Change”; or Possible Upcoming Ice Age debate:
The effects of man-made global warming are reaching epic proportions. Just how bad has it gotten? Consider this: The Great Lakes are still 52.9% ice covered, which is 1,000% above the average. Dating back to 1980, no other year comes even close. Worse, according to NOAA measurements, “Global Sea Ice Extent is 959,000 above the 1981-2010 mean. That is ranked 4th for the day. And that is 4.61% above ‘normal.'” Additionally, “Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is 1,403,000 above the 1981-2010 mean. That is ranked 1st for the day. And that is 23.74% above ‘normal.'” It’s also this young year’s 30th daily record. Clearly, we’ve got work to do. Like stocking up on blankets!!!
So, What Happened Today In 1743?
Future President of the United States Thomas Jefferson is born
Future President Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s preeminent political theorist, is born on this day in 1743.
Historian and biographer Joseph Ellis has called Jefferson, who had a monumental role in shaping American politics, the American sphinx for his enigmatic character. Since his terms in office, presidents and politicians from both ends of the political spectrum have borrowed from Jefferson’s political philosophy in an attempt to link their own leadership with this most influential and admired founding father.
Jefferson’s character–as a man or a president–defies definition in black and white. He was at once an intellectual, architect, philosopher, musician and essayist. His fascination with science prompted his study and collection of fossils. He projected a down-to-earth, relaxed and unconventional attitude and his desire to be seen as a common man was reflected in his penchant for receiving White House visitors in a robe and slippers. Jefferson denounced oppressive government and was a fierce proponent of freedom of speech and religion. He worried that fellow founding fathers George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton had designs to fashion the American presidency after a monarchy. When Washington and Hamilton proposed a national bank and state assumption of national debt, Jefferson resigned from Washington’s cabinet in protest. He adamantly rejected Hamilton’s plan to build a strong federal military, fearing it might be used by a tyrannical leader against American citizens.
Though Jefferson was highly principled, he was not above using smear tactics against political opponents. He anonymously assailed his victims in print under a pseudonym and helped to fund the anti-Federalist press.
Although in theory Jefferson desired the abolition of slavery, it is a fact that Jefferson owned other human beings who worked his plantation. Historical accounts indicate Jefferson treated his slaves well within the context of the times. It has long been rumored–and debated by historians–that one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, was Jefferson’s lover. She bore a son, named Eston, in 1808. For 200 years, the Hemings affair and Eston’s paternity were the focus of intense scholarly analysis. In 1998, DNA testing proved that a Jefferson was Eston’s biological father, which many took to mean that he was indeed Thomas Jefferson’s son, a fact backed up by the oral tradition of the Hemings family. However, other scholars have disagreed with this conclusion and it remains a topic of fervent debate.
Jefferson, a widower since the death of his wife Martha in 1782, is also thought to have had a relationship with Maria Cosway, a beautiful (and married) British painter and musician whom he met while serving as minister to France. Jefferson’s relationship with Cosway inspired him to write the romantic essay A Dialogue Between the Head and Heart in October 1786. One historical account of their affair paints Jefferson as a lovesick schoolboy–as he and Cosway shared a romantic walk in the countryside near Paris, Jefferson attempted to leap over a fence, fell and broke his wrist.
Jefferson’s anti-federalist policies and personal attacks on John Adams caused a huge falling-out between the two former friends. After retirement, though, Adams and Jefferson rekindled their personal connection. The last two original revolutionaries living, Jefferson and Adams, died on the same day: July 4, 1826.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 13 In History:
1360 – On so-called “Black Monday” in 1360, a hail storm kills an estimated 1,000 English soldiers in Chartres, France. The storm and the devastation it caused also played a part in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France;
1613 – Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, was captured by English Capt. Samuel Argall in the Virginia Colony and held in exchange for English prisoners and stolen weapons. During a yearlong captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and ultimately opted to stay with the English;
1775 – In the American Revolution leading up to the war, Lord North extends the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act forbids trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland;
1777 – In the American Revolutionary War, in the early morning hours, General Lord Charles Cornwallis leads 4,000 British troops and Hessian mercenaries in a surprise attack on a small garrison of American troops in the village of Bound Brook in central New Jersey. Cornwallis’ decision to launch the four-column attack at daybreak caught American Major General Benjamin Lincoln and the Continental Army completely by surprise; they were unable to launch a counterattack. Surprised and outnumbered, Lincoln ordered his men to retreat and was able to escape along with most of his 500 troops; his losses totaled 60 men killed or taken prisoner. The British also captured several cannons and nearly all of Lincoln’s artillery detachment, which they took with them, returning to their camp at New Brunswick. Since the British chose not to stay in Bound Brook, the Continental Army re-occupied the village under Major General Nathanael Greene. Ultimately, though, General George Washington decided that it would be easier to defend Bound Brook from a loftier vantage point, moving troops to the Watchung Mountains of north-central New Jersey;
1861 – After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory. The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. When President Abraham Lincoln sent word to Charleston in early April that he planned to send food to the beleaguered garrison, the Confederates took action. They opened fire on Sumter in the predawn of April 12. Over the next day, nearly 4,000 rounds were hurled toward the black silhouette of Fort Sumter. The first engagement of the war was over, and the only casualty had been a Confederate horse. The Union force was allowed to leave for the north; before leaving, the soldiers fired a 100-gun salute. During the salute, one soldier was killed and another mortally wounded by a prematurely exploding cartridge. The Civil War had officially begun;
1866 – Butch Cassidy, the last of the great western train-robbers, is born on this day in Beaver, Utah Territory. Born Robert Leroy Parker, he was the son of Mormon parents who had answered Brigham Young’s call for young couples to help build communities of Latter Day Saints on the Utah frontier. Cassidy was the first of 13 children born to Max and Annie Parker;
1902 – J.C. Penny opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming;
1918 – In World War I, as part of Germany’s support of Finland and its newly declared parliamentary government, German troops wrest control of Helsingfors (Helsinki) from the Red Guard, an army of Finnish supporters of the Russian Bolsheviks;
1919 – In Amritsar, India’s holy city of the Sikh religion, British and Gurkha troops massacre at least 379 unarmed demonstrators meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh, a city park. Most of those killed were Indian nationalists meeting to protest the British government’s forced conscription of Indian soldiers and the heavy war tax imposed against the Indian people;
1939 – Prior to the United States entry to World War II, the USS Astoria arrives in Japan under the command of Richmond Kelly Turner in an attempt to photograph the Japanese battleships Yamato and Musashi. U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Turner, whose motto was “If you don’t have losses, you’re not doing enough,” saw the cruiser Astoria through many assignments, from assessing Japanese naval strength before U.S. entry in the war, to returning the ashes of a Japanese ambassador to Japan, to the amphibious assault at Guadalcanal. The Astoria was unfortunately sunk, along with the Quincy and the Vincennes, during Operation Watchtower, the landing of 16,000 troops on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, in August 1942;
1943 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of the third American president’s birth;
1945 – Near the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler proclaims from his underground bunker that deliverance was at hand from encroaching Russian troops–Berlin would remain German. A “mighty artillery is waiting to greet the enemy,” proclaims Der Fuhrer. This as Germans loyal to the Nazi creed continue the mass slaughter of Jews. As Hitler attempted to inflate his troops’ morale, German soldiers, Hitler Youth, and local police chased 5,000 to 6,000 Jewish prisoners into a large barn, setting it on fire, in hopes of concealing the evidence of their monstrous war crimes as the end of the Reich quickly became a reality. As the Jewish victims attempted to burrow their way out of the blazing barn, Germans surrounding the conflagration shot them. “Several thousand people were burned alive,” reported one survivor. The tragic irony is that President Roosevelt, had he lived, intended to give an address at the annual Jefferson Day dinner in Washington, D.C. on that very day, proclaiming his desire for “an end to the beginnings of all wars–yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman, and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.”;
1964 – Sidney Poitier became the first black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.”;
1970 – Disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive;
1972 – Three North Vietnamese divisions attack An Loc with infantry, tanks, heavy artillery and rockets, taking half the city after a day of close combat. An Loc, the capital of Binh Long Province, was located 65 miles northwest of Saigon. This attack was the southernmost thrust of the three-pronged Nguyen Hue Offensive (later more commonly known as the “Easter Offensive”), a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces designed to strike the knockout blow that would win the war for the communists;
1974 – NASA launched Westar 1, America’s first commercial communications satellite, for Western Union;
1986 – Pope John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue of Rome in the first recorded papal visit of its kind to a Jewish house of worship;
1990 – During the final days of the (first) Cold War, the Soviet government officially accepts blame for the Katyn Massacre of World War II, when nearly 5,000 Polish military officers were murdered and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest. The admission was part of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s promise to be more forthcoming and candid concerning Soviet history;
1997 – 21-year-old Tiger Woods wins the prestigious Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes in Augusta, Georgia. It was Woods’ first victory in one of golf’s four major championships–the U.S. Open, the British Open, the PGA Championship, and the Masters–and the greatest performance by a professional golfer in more than a century;
1999 – Right-to-die advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder in the lethal injection of a Lou Gehrig’s disease patient. Kevorkian ended up serving eight years;
2004 – Conceding a couple of “tough weeks in Iraq,” President George W. Bush signaled he was ready to put more American troops on the front lines and use decisive force if necessary to restore order despite “gut-wrenching” televised images of fallen Americans;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
In closing today and as a special addition for you I provide – God’s Love Letter To You – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggGwDrxrC2k
And as we
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
– Romans 3:23-24
Our Loving Father, thank you for being so generous with your grace. May I be as passionate for your righteousness as you were in redeeming me from my sin. Through Jesus I ask this. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!