Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 25, the 115th day of 2014 and there are 250 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 !!!
As if we needed yet another reason to despise the IRS, the Associated Press reports on an inspector general investigation revealing that between October 2012 and December 2012, tax evaders within the agency itself were awarded $1 million in bonuses and $2.8 million overall was given “to employees with recent disciplinary problems.” The AP notes, “[The] report said the bonus program doesn’t violate federal regulations, but it’s inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.” Those would be the very tax laws that land ordinary citizens in deep trouble for evading. But laws are for the little people; breaking the law in the public sector earns you a reward. The report adds that these bonuses “create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.” Did the agency ever have any integrity? The targeting of conservative groups should put any such assertion to rest.
So, What Happened Today In 1864?
Confederate forces overwhelm Union troops at Marks’ Mills
During the American Civil War, for the second time in a week, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock.
Steele captured Camden on April 15 as he moved southwest towards Shreveport, Louisiana. This was part of a larger Union operation in the region. General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River into northwest Louisiana on a planned invasion of Texas, but he was turned back at the Battle of Mansfield in Louisiana on April 8. Steele was to pinch Confederate forces around Shreveport with a move from central Arkansas. After taking Camden, Steele sent 1,100 men west to capture a store of corn. That force was badly defeated by a Confederate detachment at the Battle of Poison Spring in Arkansas on April 18. Now, with provisions dwindling, Steele sent another wagon train northeast from Camden towards Pine Bluff to fetch supplies.
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Drake and 1,700 Union troops accompanied the 240 wagons that left Camden on April 22. Three hundred runaway slaves traveled along as well. Three days later, Confederate troops under General James Fagan pounced on Drake’s command near Marks’ Mills. They came from two sides, and Drake was wounded and captured early in the battle along with 1,400 of his troops. The Confederates lost 41 killed and 108 wounded, but they captured the entire wagon train. The Rebels followed up their victory much as they had at Poison Spring on April 18, where they massacred captured black soldiers. At Marks’ Mills, at least half of the runaways were killed in cold blood. Even one of the Confederate officers admitted in his report that “No orders, threat, or commands could restrain the men from vengeance on the Negroes…”
Steele’s army was now in dangerous territory. With Confederate forces lurking all around Camden and with supplies running low, Steele retreated to Little Rock, leaving southern Arkansas under Rebel control. Drake survived his wounds and later became governor of Iowa. Drake University in Des Moines now bears his name.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 25 In History:
1507 – A world map produced by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller contained the first recorded use of the term “America,” in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci;
1719 – Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s;
1781 – In the American Revolutionary War, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis retreats to Wilmington, North Carolina, after being defeated at Guilford Courthouse by 4,500 Continental Army soldiers and militia under the command of American Major General Nathanael Greene. With Cornwallis’ defeat, the British task of defending North Carolina fell to a young Irish-born nobleman, Francis, Lord Rawdon, an officer of marked ability, who went on to execute an unlikely victory over Greene at Hobkirk’s Hill, a ridge just north of Camden, North Carolina;
1792 – Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine;
1859 – At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction. When it opened, the Suez Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface. Consequently, fewer than 500 ships navigated it in its first full year of operation. Today, an average of 50 ships navigate the canal daily, carrying more than 300 million tons of goods a year;
1898 – The day after Spain made their declaration, the United States formally declared war on Spain;
1901 – New York Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. signed an automobile registration bill which imposed a 15 mph speed limit on highways;
1915 – During World War I, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war;
1917 – Jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia. She was called “The First Lady of Song,” an honor whose meaning is captured in a compliment paid to her by the great composer Ira Gershwin: “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” Quite apart from the quality of her voice, there was a warmth and intelligence behind it that gave even melancholy songs a plausible tilt toward optimism;
1945 – At the end of World War II, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory. The Allies sounded the death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of the link-up between the two armies resulted in a 324-gun salute; in New York, crowds burst into song and dance in the middle of Times Square;
1947 – President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley on this day in 1947. The two-lane bowling alley, situated in the West Wing, had been constructed earlier that year. Truman’s favorite pastime was poker and although he had not bowled since he was a teenager, he gamely hoisted the first ball, knocking down 7 out of 10 pins. One of the pins is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution;
1951 – In the Korean War, after a three day fight against overwhelming Chinese Communist Forces, the British United Nations Gloucestershire Regiment is forced to retreat in the battle of “Gloucester Hill”;
1959 – The St. Lawrence Seaway, the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, is opened to shipping;
1960 – The first submerged circumnavigation of the Earth is completed by a Triton submarine;
1964 – During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Gen. William Westmoreland will replace Gen. Paul Harkins as head of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as of June 20. One of the war’s most controversial figures, General Westmoreland was given many honors when the fighting was going well, but when the war turned sour, many Americans saw him as a cause of U.S. problems in Vietnam. Negative feeling about Westmoreland grew particularly strong following the Tet Offensive of 1968, when he had requested a large number of additional troops for deployment to Vietnam. On March 22, 1968, President Johnson announced that Westmoreland would depart South Vietnam to take on the post of Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as the senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam;
1972 – In the Vietnam War, Hanoi’s 320th Division drives 5,000 South Vietnamese troops into retreat and traps about 2,500 others in a border outpost northwest of Kontum in the Central Highlands. This was part of the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also known as the “Easter Offensive,” which included an invasion by 120,000 North Vietnamese troops. The offensive was based on three objectives: Quang Tri in the north, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc in the south–just 65 miles north of Saigon. If successful, the attack at Kontum would effectively cut South Vietnam in two across the Central Highlands, giving North Vietnam control of the northern half of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese defenders were able to hold out and prevent this from happening;
1980 – A Dan-Air Boeing 727 carrying British tourists to the Canary Islands crashes and kills all 146 on board on this day in 1980. This terrible crash came just three years after another even deadlier accident at the Canary Islands airport. In 1977, a KLM jumbo jet had collided with a Pan Am plane on the runway; 570 people were killed. The collision occurred when communication problems between the planes and air-traffic controllers exacerbated already dangerous foggy conditions. The heavily accented English spoken by the Spanish-speaking air traffic controllers was partly to blame;
1983 – During the (first) cold War, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov’s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war. President Ronald Reagan, a passionate anti-communist, had dubbed the Soviet Union the “evil empire” and called for massive increases in U.S. defense spending to meet the perceived Soviet threat. Smith had written the Soviet leader as part of a class assignment, one that was common enough for students in the Cold War years. Most of these missives received a form letter response, if any at all, but Andropov answered Smith’s letter personally. Andropov declared, “Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth. Soviet propaganda had never been known for its human qualities. In his public relations duel with Reagan, the American president known as the “Great Communicator”, Andropov tried something different by assuming a folksy, almost grandfatherly approach. Whether this would have borne fruit is unknown; just a year later, Andropov died;
1990 – The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. Free of atmospheric distortions, Hubble has a resolution 10 times that of ground-based observatories. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered and orbits Earth once every 97 minutes. Among its many astronomical achievements, Hubble has been used to record a comet’s collision with Jupiter, provide a direct look at the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies, gas clouds, and black holes, and see billions of years into the universe’s past;
2009 – In her first trip to Iraq as America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to reassure nervous Iraqis that the U.S. wouldn’t abandon them, even as she said the American troop withdrawal would stay on schedule, (hummm – wonder how that worked out for the Iraqis?);
2009 – Finance ministers meeting in Washington said they saw signs the global economy was stabilizing but cautioned it would take until the middle of next year for the world to emerge from the worst recession in decades. (I have to wonder, WHICH ‘next year’ were they referring to?);
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
Words with Power
As I
A thought:
Christ lives in me. Until I can become completely like him through the power of the Spirit, he lives in me. Until I can go home to be with him he lives in me. Everywhere I go and everything I do, he is in me. Our goal is to have him formed more perfectly in us, not just live in us. Of course, that will be done by his power and through the gift of his Spirit!
Leads us to a verse:
God has chosen you to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
– Colossians 1:27-28
That takes us to a prayer:
Father God, may the presence of Jesus within me stir me to do your work today. May your abiding grace, through the presence of your gracious Son, call me to your character and your concerns. O Jesus, please make my heart like our Father’s. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
