Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 17, the 107th day of 2014 and there are 258 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 !!!
Did someone ask about ‘Freedom’?
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.”
– Philosopher & political theorist John Locke, 1632-1704
So, What Happened Today In 1790?
American Patriot and Statesman, Benjamin Franklin, dies
American statesman, American patriot, printer, scientist, and writer Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84.
Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin became at 12 years old an apprentice to his half brother James, a printer and publisher. He learned the printing trade and in 1723 went to Philadelphia to work after a dispute with his brother. After a sojourn in London, he started a printing and publishing press with a friend in 1728. In 1729, the company won a contract to publish Pennsylvania’s paper currency and also began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was regarded as one of the better colonial newspapers. From 1732 to 1757, he wrote and published Poor Richard’s Almanack, an instructive and humorous periodical in which Franklin coined such practical American proverbs as “God helps those who help themselves” and “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
As his own wealth and prestige grew, Franklin took on greater civic responsibilities in Philadelphia and helped establish the city’s first circulating library, police force, volunteer fire company, and an academy that became the University of Pennsylvania. From 1737 to 1753, he was postmaster of Philadelphia and during this time also served as a clerk of the Pennsylvania legislature. In 1753, he became deputy postmaster general, in charge of mail in all the northern colonies.
Deeply interested in science and technology, he invented the Franklin stove, which is still manufactured today, and bifocal eyeglasses, among other practical inventions. In 1748, he turned his printing business over to his partner so he would have more time for his experiments. The phenomenon of electricity fascinated him, and in a dramatic experiment he flew a kite in a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is an electrical discharge. He later invented the lightning rod. Many terms used in discussing electricity, including positive, negative, battery, and conductor, were coined by Franklin in his scientific papers. He was the first American scientist to be highly regarded in European scientific circles.
Franklin was active in colonial affairs and in 1754 proposed the union of the colonies, which was rejected by Britain. In 1757, he went to London to argue for the right to tax the massive estates of the Penn family in Pennsylvania, and in 1764 went again to ask for a new charter for Pennsylvania. He was in England when Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. His initial failure to actively oppose the controversial act drew wide criticism in the colonies, but he soon redeemed himself by stoutly defending American rights before the House of Commons. With tensions between the American colonies and Britain rising, he stayed on in London and served as agent for several colonies.
In 1775, he returned to America as the American Revolution approached and was a delegate at the Continental Congress. In 1776, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and in July signed the final document. Ironically, Franklin’s illegitimate son, William Franklin, whom Franklin and his wife had raised, had at the same time emerged as a leader of the Loyalists. In 1776, Congress sent Benjamin Franklin, one of the embattled United States’ most prominent statesmen, to France as a diplomat. Warmly embraced, he succeeded in 1778 in securing two treaties that provided the Americans with significant military and economic aid. In 1781, with French help, the British were defeated. With John Jay and John Adams, Franklin then negotiated the Treaty of Paris with Britain, which was signed in 1783.
In 1785, Franklin returned to the United States. In his last great public service, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and worked hard for the document’s ratification. After his death in 1790, Philadelphia gave him the largest funeral the city had ever seen.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 17 In History:
858 – Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope;
1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as when the book’s pilgrimage to Canterbury starts;
1421 – The sea broke through the’ dikes’ at Dort, Holland drowning an estimated 100,000 people;
1492 – Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain to find a western route to the Indies;
1524 – Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni Verrazano, a Florentine navigator;
1783 – At the end of the American Revolutionary War, at about 2 a.m. on the morning of April 17, 1783, British Captain James Colbert, along with a group of 82 British partisans, launches a surprise attack on the Arkansas post of Fort Carlos (modern-day Gillett, in Desha County), located on the banks of the Arkansas River. The “Colbert Raid” was the only Revolutionary War action to take place in Arkansas which took place nearly two months after America’s preliminary peace treaty was signed with Great Britain, but word of the peace treaty did not reach either the British or American troops located in the Mississippi Valley until well after the raid. The state of Arkansas now maintains the fort and it surroundings as the Arkansas Post Memorial and Arkansas Post Museum State Park;
1797 – Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico in what would be one of the largest invasions to Spanish territories in America;
1815 – Heavy eruptions of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia are letting up by this day. The volcano, which began rumbling on April 5, killed almost 100,000 people directly and indirectly. The eruption was the largest ever recorded and its effects were noted throughout the world;
1861 – Virginia become eighth state to secede from the Union;
1864 – In the American Civil War, Confederate forces attack Plymouth, North Carolina, in an attempt to recapture ports lost to the Union two years before. The four-day battle ended with the fall of Plymouth, but the Yankees kept the city bottled up with a flotilla on nearby Albemarle Sound. The Confederates lost 163 men killed and 554 wounded, but captured the entire Union garrison and vast amounts of supplies and arms. The Union lost about 150 killed and wounded, while several hundred of the captured soldiers eventually died at the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia. The Rebel victory was limited by the fact that the C.S.S. Albemarle was still pinned in the Roanoke River. The crew tried to fight past a Union flotilla on Albemarle Sound on May 5, but it could not escape. It was destroyed in a Union raid on Plymouth on October 27, 1864. Yankee troops recaptured the city four days later;
1875 – The game of “snooker”, (a variation of pool), is invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain;
1882 – Several copies of Sheriff Pat Garrett’s wildly inauthentic biography, An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, arrive at the Library of Congress, beginning the widespread dissemination of this highly fictionalized story of the western outlaw. Americans were no less hungry for violent stories of ruthless desperados in 1882 than they are today, and Garrett and his publishers shamelessly catered to these appetites. Garrett claimed to be writing the book to put an end to the exaggerated newspaper accounts of the day. Subsequent historians, however, have suggested that Garrett wrote the book to improve his own image and chances for a successful political career. His story portrays Billy the Kid as a ruthless killer who was only stopped by Garrett’s own selfless and brave actions. Today, historians realize that An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid is a highly biased and inaccurate portrait of a poorly understood young man living in a complex time. Nonetheless, Garrett’s mythical version of Billy the Kid continues to live on in the popular imagination and in countless western books and movies;
1920 – The American Professional Football Association, NFL, forms;
1937 – Cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Elmer J Fudd & Petunia Pig, make their debut;
1941 – During World War II, representatives of Yugoslavia’s various regions sign an armistice with Nazi Germany at Belgrade, ending 11 days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. Only 200 Germans died in the conquest of Yugoslavia;
1942 – During World War II, French General Henri Giraud, who was captured in 1940, escapes from a castle prison at Konigstein by lowering himself down the castle wall and jumping on board a moving train, which takes him to the French border. Hitler, outraged, ordered Giraud’s assassination upon being caught, but the French general was able to make it to North Africa via a British submarine. He joined the French Free Forces under General Charles de Gaulle and eventually helped to rebuild the French army;
1945 – In post World War II Germany, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash commandeers over half a ton of uranium at Strassfut, in an effort to prevent the Russians from developing an A-bomb. Pash was head of the Alsos Group, organized to search for German scientists in the postwar environment in order to prevent the Russians, previously Allies but now a potential threat, from capturing any scientists and putting them to work at their own atomic research plants. Uranium piles were also rich “catches,” as they were necessary to the development of atomic weapons;
1961 – In the (first) Cold War, The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA-financed and -trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure and cost the United States dearly. Castro used the attack by the “Yankee imperialists” to solidify his power in Cuba and he requested additional Soviet military aid. Eventually that aid included missiles, and the construction of missile bases in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to blows over the issue. Further, throughout much of Latin America, the United States was pilloried for its use of armed force in trying to unseat Castro, a man who was considered a hero to many for his stance against U.S. interference and imperialism. Kennedy tried to redeem himself by publicly accepting blame for the attack and its subsequent failure, but the botched mission left the young president looking vulnerable and indecisive;
1964 – The Ford Mustang, a two-seat, mid-engine sports car, is officially unveiled by Henry Ford II at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, on April 17, 1964. That same day, the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Named for a World War II fighter plane, the Mustang was the first of a type of vehicle that came to be known as a “pony car.” Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations. The Mustang was conceived as a “working man’s Thunderbird,” according to Ford. Over the decades, the Mustang underwent numerous evolutions, and it remains in production today, with more than 9 million sold;
1969 – During the (first) Cold War, Alexander Dubcek, the communist leader who launched a broad program of liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia, is forced to resign as first secretary by the Soviet forces occupying his country. The staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak was appointed Czechoslovak leader in his place, reestablishing an authoritarian communist dictatorship in the Soviet satellite state;
1969 – Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and is sentenced six days later to the death penalty in the gas chamber. Three years later, his sentence was commuted to life in prison;
1970 – Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth. On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission was headed for a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the spacecraft. Astronaut Swigert radioed to mission control, “Houston, we’ve have a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth. The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply, as well as providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean;
1972 – During the Vietnam War, the first major antiwar protest of 1972 is held. The demonstration, held at the University of Maryland, was organized to protest the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). Hundreds of students were arrested and 800 National Guardsmen were ordered onto the campus. Significant protests continued across the country in reaction to the increased bombing of North Vietnam, which had been initiated in response to the new communist offensive in South Vietnam;
1975 – Near the end of the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge troops capture Phnom Penh and government forces surrender. The war between government troops and the communist insurgents had been raging since March 1970, when Lt. Gen. Lon Nol had ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk in a bloodless coup and proclaimed the establishment of the Khmer Republic. During the five years of bitter fighting, approximately 10 percent of Cambodia’s 7 million people died. When the U.S. forces departed South Vietnam in 1973, both the Cambodians and South Vietnamese found themselves fighting the communists alone. Without U.S. support, Lon Nol’s forces fought on, but eventually succumbed to the Khmer Rouge. With the surrender, the victorious Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh and set about reordering Cambodian society. This resulted in a killing spree and the notorious “killing fields.” Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were murdered or died from exhaustion, hunger, and disease;
1986 – IBM produces the first computer megabit-chip;
2010 – Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls for the US to be expelled from the international nuclear system because religion prohibits the use of nuclear weapons;
2013 – An explosion at a fertilizer plant in the city of West, Texas, causes 15 deaths, 100 injuries and major damage to nearby buildings, residences, a nursing home and middle school;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
– 1 Corinthians 1:18
Holy God, I praise you for your incredible might and power. But I also thank you for your love which guides the release of that power. Thank you for knowing that I am but dust without your sustaining Spirit. Thank you for saving me by withholding your mighty power so I could be pardoned by your sacrificial power. Because of Jesus’ mercy, and in his holy name, I offer this prayer. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
