Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 7, the 97th day of 2014 and there are 268 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 need to take this opportunity to thank you all for your patience with my not posting over the weekend. As I mentioned, we held the yard sale over the weekend which at my new slower pace, took quite a bit of my energy and having gotten a little bad news on my back and shoulder late last week it turned into quite a painful weekend as well. Hopefully, the joint injections I got will start working soon relieving some of the pain and I’ll be a little more mobile without having to invoke the option of surgery. We’ll know in a week or two. I thank you all for prayers and thoughts!
So, What Happened Today In 1862?
The American Civil War Battle of Shiloh comes to a conclusion
In the American Civil War, two days of heavy fighting conclude near Pittsburgh Landing in western Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh became a Union victory after the Confederate attack stalled on April 6, and fresh Yankee troops drove the Confederates from the field on April 7.
Shiloh began when Union General Ulysses S. Grant brought his army down the Tennessee River to Pittsburgh Landing in an effort to move on Corinth, Mississippi, 20 miles to the southwest. Union occupation of Corinth, a major rail center, would allow the Yankees to control nearly all of western Tennessee. At Corinth, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston did not wait for Grant to attack. He moved his army toward Grant, striking on the morning of April 6. Throughout the day, the Confederates drove the Yankees back but could not break the Union lines before darkness halted the advance. Johnston was killed during the first day, so General Pierre G. T. Beauregard assumed command of the Confederate force.
Now, Grant was joined by the vanguard of Buell’s army. With an advantage in terms of troop numbers, Grant counterattacked on April 7. The tired Confederates slowly retreated, but they inflicted heavy casualties on the Yankees. By nightfall, the Union had driven the Confederates back to Shiloh Church, recapturing grisly reminders of the previous days’ battle such as the Hornets’ Nest, the Peach Orchard, and Bloody Pond. The Confederates finally limped back to Corinth, thus giving a major victory to Grant.
The cost of the victory was high. Grant’s and Buell’s forces totaled about 62,000, of which 1,754 were killed, 8,408 were wounded, and 2,885 were captured or missing for a total of 13,047 casualties. Of 45,000 Confederates engaged, 1,723 were killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing for a total of 10,694 casualties. The 23,741 casualties were five times the number at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, and they were more than all of the war’s major battles (Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge) to that date combined. It was a sobering reminder to all in the Union and the Confederacy that the war would be long and costly.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 7 In History:
1776 – During the American Revolution, Navy Captain John Barry, commander of the American warship Lexington, makes the first American naval capture of a British vessel when he takes command of the British warship HMS Edward off the coast of Virginia. The capture of the Edward and its cargo turned Captain Barry into a national hero and boosted the morale of the Continental forces. On September 13, 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared Commodore John Barry Day to honor a man he called one of the earliest and greatest American patriots, a man of great insight who perceived very early the need for American power on the sea;
1798 – The Mississippi Territory was created by an act of Congress, with Natchez as the capital;
1805 – After a long winter, the Lewis and Clark expedition departs its camp among the Mandan Indians and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River;
1922 – The Teapot Dome scandal had its beginnings as Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts;
1933 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs legislation ending Prohibition in the United States;
1939 – In World War II, in an effort to mimic Hitler’s conquest of Prague, Benito Mussolini’s troops, though badly organized, invade and occupy Albania. Although the invasion of Albania was intended as but a prelude to greater conquests in the Balkans, it proved a costly enterprise for Il Duce. Albania was already dependent on Italy’s economy, so had little to offer the invaders. And future exploits in neighboring nations, in Greece in particular, proved to be disastrous for the Italians;
1945 – In World War II, the Japanese battleship Yamato, ostensibly the greatest battleship in the world, is sunk in Japan’s first major counteroffensive in the struggle for Okinawa. Weighing 72,800 tons and outfitted with nine 18.1-inch guns, the battleship Yamato was Japan’s only hope of destroying the Allied fleet off the coast of Okinawa. But insufficient air cover and fuel cursed the endeavor as a suicide mission. Struck by 19 American aerial torpedoes, it was sunk, drowning 2,498 of its crew;
1947 – Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, which developed the first affordable, mass-produced car–the Model T–and also helped pioneer assembly-line manufacturing, dies at his estate in Dearborn, Michigan, at the age of 83. Despite Henry Ford’s vision and success, his company was criticized for not responding fast enough to consumer demands for new models in the 1920s, which allowed General Motors to pull ahead and become the world’s biggest automaker until 2008, when it was surpassed by Japan-based Toyota;
1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both used the theory to justify their calls for increased U.S. economic and military assistance to non-communist South Vietnam and, eventually, the commitment of U.S. armed forces in 1965;
1963 – During the (first) Cold War, a new Yugoslav constitution proclaims Tito the president for life of the newly named Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;
1966 – The U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash;
1975 – In the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese forces prepare to launch the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign,” designed to set the conditions for a final communist victory in South Vietnam. By this time, well over two-thirds of South Vietnam was under communist control as South Vietnamese forces had fallen back in panic when the North Vietnamese pressed the attack. By April 27, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for their final assault. By the morning of April 30, it was all over. When the North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, the South Vietnamese surrendered and the Vietnam War was finally over;
1990 – In a tragic coincidence, two separate ferry accidents in different areas of the world take the lives of a reported 325 people on this day in 1990. The first took place in Myanmar (formerly Burma) on the Gyaing River. Later in the day, Scandinavia was also rocked by tragedy;
1994 – Rwandan armed forces kill 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in their genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In less than three months, Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda murdered an estimated 800,000 innocent civilian Tutsis in the worst episode of genocide since World War II. The Tutsis, a minority group that made up about 10 percent of Rwanda’s population, received no assistance from the international community, although the United Nations later conceded that a mere 5,000 soldiers deployed at the outset would have stopped the wholesale slaughter. Despite the horrific crimes, the international community, especially the United States, hesitated to take any action. They wrongly ascribed the genocide to chaos amid tribal war. By the summer, the RPF had defeated the Hutu forces and driven them out of the country and into several neighboring nations. However, by that time, 75 percent of the Tutsis living in Rwanda had been murdered;
2004 – Mounir el-Motassadeq, convicted of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, was freed less than 2 1/2 years into a 15-year sentence after a court in Hamburg, Germany, ruled the evidence was too weak to hold him pending a retrial. El-Motassadeq was convicted in 2006 of being a member of a terrorist group and an accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the attacks on New York and Washington; he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum penalty possible under German law;
2012 – Broadcast journalist Mike Wallace, a full-time correspondent for the pioneering TV news magazine “60 Minutes” from its debut in 1968 until 2006, dies at age 93 in New Canaan, Connecticut. During his career, Wallace interviewed everyone from world leaders to Hollywood celebrities to scam artists, and was well-known for his hard-nosed style of questioning;
2013 – In Egypt, Christians angered by the killing of four Christians in sectarian violence clashed with a Muslim mob throwing rocks and firebombs, killing one and turning Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral into a battleground;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
Today’s Verse & Prayer:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
– Galatians 2:20
Thank you, God, for loving me and sending Jesus to redeem me from my sin. I commit to you today that I will live by faith in your Son who gave himself so I can spend eternity with you. I ask that by your Spirit, you help Jesus’ life be seen in me. Through him I pray. Amen
