Today In History; May 1

May 1, 2014

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Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !

Today is May 1, the 121st day of 2014 and there are 244 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 !!!

Today being our ‘National Day of Prayer‘ I pray that you all are able to attend any services you may desire and if unable to do that, take a moment, even if just by yourself and ‘Have a word with GOD’!!! It’s more than worth your time!!!

So that with one mind and one voice you may glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
– Romans 15:6

So, What Happened Today In 1863?

The Battle of Chancellorsville Virginia begins

During the American Civil War, the Battle of Chancellorsville begins in Virginia. Earlier in the year, General Joseph Hooker led the Army of the Potomac into Virginia to confront Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Hooker had recently replaced Ambrose Burnside who presided over the Army of the Potomac for one calamitous campaign the previous December; the Battle of Fredericksburg. At that conflict, the Yankees amassed over 14,000 casualties while the Rebels suffered some 5,000 casualties.

After spending the spring retooling his army and boosting their sinking morale, Hooker advanced toward the Confederate army, possessing perhaps the greatest advantage over Lee that any Union commander had during the war. His force numbered some 115,000 men, while Lee had just 60,000 troops present for service. Absent from the Confederate army were two divisions under General James Longstreet, which were performing detached service in southern Virginia.

Hooker had a strategically sound plan. He intended to avoid the Confederate trenches that protected a long stretch of the Rappahannock River around Fredericksburg. Placing two-thirds of his forces in front of Fredericksburg to feign a frontal assault and keep the Confederates occupied, he marched the rest of his army up the river, crossed the Rappahannock, and began to move behind Lee’s army. The well-executed plan placed the Army of Northern Virginia in grave danger.

But Lee’s tactical brilliance and gambler’s intuition saved him. He split his force, leaving 10,000 troops under Jubal Early to hold the Federals at bay in Fredericksburg, and then marched the rest of his army west to meet the bulk of Hooker’s force. Conflict erupted on May 1 when the two armies met in an open area beyond the Wilderness, the tangled forest just west of the tiny burgh of Chancellorsville. Surprisingly, Hooker ordered his forces to fall back into defensive positions after only limited combat, effectively giving the initiative to Lee. Despite the fact that his army far outnumbered Lee’s, and had the Confederates clamped between two substantial forces, Hooker went on the defensive. In the following days, Lee executed his most daring battle plan. He split his army again, sending Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson further west around the Union’s right flank. The crushing attack snapped the Union army and sent Hooker in retreat to Washington, D.C., and, perhaps more than any other event during the war, cemented Lee’s invincibility in the eyes of both sides.

Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 1 In History:

408 – Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople;

1328 – The ‘Wars of Scottish Independence’ end as the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton goes into effect whereby the Kingdom of England recognises the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state;

1486 – Christopher Columbus convinces Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies;

1805 – The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation;

1852 – In the American “Old West”, the adventurer and performer Calamity Jane is born near Princeton, Missouri. The myths and fabrications concerning the life of Calamity Jane are so numerous it is difficult to discover her true story. Legend has it that at various times Jane worked as a dishwasher at Fort Bridger, a laborer on the Union Pacific, a scout for General Custer, and a teamster. Some claim that Jane’s parents died when she was only eight years old and the event led to her nickname “Calamity,” but serious historians have never found any solid evidence for any of these legends;

1887 – Future General and commander of British forces, Alan Gordon Cunningham, that captured Ethiopia, liberating it from its Italian invaders, is born. The younger brother of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, the man who effectively eliminated the Italian naval threat in the Mediterranean as early as 1940, General Alan Cunningham did virtually the same to the Italian threat in Ethiopia. Cunningham was less successful in campaigns in Libya and was finally relieved of his command. He returned to England and in 1941 was knighted for the successes he had enjoyed. He went on to become British high commissioner in Palestine from 1945 until Israel’s independence in 1948;

1898 – At Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the Spanish-American War. Nearly 400 Spanish sailors were killed and 10 Spanish warships wrecked or captured at the cost of only six Americans wounded. The Spanish-American War had its origins in the rebellion against Spanish rule that began in Cuba in 1895. The repressive measures that Spain took to suppress the guerrilla war, such as herding Cuba’s rural population into disease-ridden garrison towns, were graphically portrayed in U.S. newspapers and enflamed public opinion. At 5:41 a.m., at a range of 5,400 yards from the enemy, Commodore Dewey turned to the captain of his flagship, the Olympia, and said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” Two hours later, the Spanish fleet was decimated, and Dewey ordered a pause in the fighting. He met with his captains and ordered the crews a second breakfast. The four surviving Spanish vessels, trapped in the little harbor at Cavite, refused to surrender, and at 11:15 a.m. fighting resumed. At 12:30 p.m., a signal was sent from the gunboat USS Petrel to Dewey’s flagship: “The enemy has surrendered”;

1900 – A premature blast collapses mine tunnel killing 200 at Scofield, Utah;

1915 – During World War I, in The Hague, Netherlands, the International Congress of Women adopts its resolutions on peace and women’s suffrage. The congress, also referred to as the Women’s Peace Conference, was the result of an invitation by a Dutch women’s suffrage organization to women’s rights activists around the world to gather in peaceful assemblage during one of the most divisive and intense international conflicts in history, WWI. It included more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries, including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States;

1926 – Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford’s office workers the following August. Henry Ford said of the decision: “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” At Ford’s own admission, however, the five-day workweek was also instituted in order to increase productivity: Though workers’ time on the job had decreased, they were expected to expend more effort while they were there. Manufacturers all over the country, and the world, soon followed Ford’s lead, and the Monday-to-Friday workweek became standard practice;

1931 – President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York. The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world’s tallest skyscraper. In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world’s tallest building to New York’s World Trade Center, which itself was the tallest skyscraper for but a year. Today the honor belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, which soars 2,717 feet into the sky;

1937 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II;

1941 – General Mills introduces the breakfast cereal Cheerios;

1941 – Months before its release, Orson Welles’ landmark film Citizen Kane began generating such controversy that Radio City Music Hall eventually refused to show it. Instead, Citizen Kane, now revered as one of the greatest movies in history, made its debut at the smaller RKO Palace Theater;

1944 – During World War II, the German Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight;

1960 – During the (first) Cold War, an American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. The CIA reassured the president that, even if the plane had been shot down, it was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms that would render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. Based on this information, the U.S. government issued a cover statement indicating that a weather plane had veered off course and supposedly crashed somewhere in the Soviet Union. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive. A chagrined Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane;

1961 – The first United States airline hijacking took place as Antulio Ramirez Ortiz, a Miami electrician, commandeered a National Airlines plane that was en route to Key West, Fla., and forced the pilot to fly to Cuba;

1963 – James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, becomes the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. The first American woman to successfully climb Everest was Stacy Allison in 1988;

1964 – The computer programming language BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was created by Dartmouth College professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz;

1969 – During the Vietnam War, in a speech on the floor of the Senate, George Aiken (R-Vermont), senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urges the Nixon administration to begin an immediate “orderly withdrawal” of U.S. forces from South Vietnam. Aiken said, “It should be started without delay.” The speech was widely regarded as the end of the self-imposed moratorium on criticism that senators had been following since the Nixon administration took office. Nixon responded on several occasions that ending the war was his “first priority.” His first public act in response to the mounting criticism was to announce in June 1969 that he would begin an immediate withdrawal of 25,000 troops from South Vietnam with additional withdrawals to follow at specified intervals. In order to do this, he instituted his “Vietnamization” program, which was designed to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese forces so they could eventually assume responsibility for the entire war effort;

1971 – The intercity passenger rail service Amtrak goes into operation;

1972 – In the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese troops capture Quang Tri City, the first provincial capital taken during their ongoing offensive. The fall of the city effectively gave the communists control of the entire province of Quang Tri. As the North Vietnamese prepared to continue their attack to the south, 80 percent of Hue’s population–already swollen by 300,000 refugees–fled to Da Nang to get out of the way. Farther south along the coast, three districts of Binh Dinh Province also fell, leaving about one-third of the province under communist control;

1987 – Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish born nun;

2002 – Former NBA All-Star Jayson Williams was indicted on a series of charges, including aggravated manslaughter, in connection with the shooting death of limousine driver Costas Christofi at Williams’ estate on February 14. Williams enjoyed a successful NBA career with the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets from 1990 to 1999, when a leg injury forced his retirement. Though he had several brushes with the law, Williams was better known for his affable demeanor and off-the-court charity and youth work, and was widely praised for taking in his nephews after two of his sisters died of AIDS. Williams was indicted for aggravated manslaughter and witness and evidence tampering, among other charges. On April 30, 2004, after a three-month trial, he was acquitted of the most serious charge, aggravated manslaughter, but convicted of four cover-up charges. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on reckless manslaughter. On May 21, prosecutors took the first steps toward retrying Williams. After several years of delays, in February 2010 he pled guilty to aggravated assault and was sentenced to five years in prison;

2003 – A record-breaking wave of tornadoes begins across the southern and midwestern United States. By the time the wave is over, more than 500 tornadoes are recorded for the month, shattering the previous record by more than 100. The amazing spate of twisters followed an unusually quiet month of April, when tornadoes are usually most frequent. May 2003 had a remarkable 516 recorded twisters. Illinois alone had 74 recorded tornadoes in May 2003, almost 50 percent more than its previous monthly high. Missouri suffered through 71 twisters in the month, which dwarfed the pervious high of 29 in December 1982. The worst stretch of tornadoes over a small stretch of time was recorded April 3-4, 1974, when 148 individual tornadoes touched down across the Midwest in an 18-hour period. During a single hour in the middle of this vast storm, 20 tornadoes were recorded at the same time. More than 300 people died in this single storm;

2004 – The European Union swelled from 15 nations to 25 by taking in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, along with the Mediterranean nations of Cyprus and Malta;

2004 – Attackers stormed the offices of Houston-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, killing six Westerners and a Saudi; all four attackers were killed after an hour-long police chase in which they dragged the body of an American from the bumper of their car;

2010 – A car bomb is discovered and deactivated in New York City’s Times Square;

2011 – Pope John Paul II is beatified by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI;

2013 – The United Nations Human Rights Office determine it is a violation of international law to force-feed hunger strikers at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison;

2013 – It was one year ago Today!

Today, I ask everyone to