Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 19, the 139th day of 2014 and there are 226 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 !!!
“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”
– John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776
So, What Happened Today In 1836?
Cynthia Ann Parker is kidnapped
In the American ‘Old West’, during a raid, Commanche, Kiowa, and Caddo Indians in Texas kidnap nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker and killed her family. Adopted into the Commanche tribe, she lived a happy life until Texas Rangers recaptured her and forced her to return to live again among Anglo-Americans.
Silas and Lucy Parker moved their young family from Illinois to Texas in 1832. To protect themselves against the hostile Indians in the region, they erected a solidly constructed civilian stockade about 40 miles east of present-day Waco that came to be called Parker’s Fort. The tall wooden stockade was reportedly capable of holding off “a large enemy force” if properly defended. However, when no Indian attacks materialized for many months, the Parker family and the relatives who joined them in the fort became careless. Frequently they left the bulletproof gates to the fort wide open for long periods.
On this day in 1836, several hundred Commanche, Kiowa, and Caddo Indians staged a surprise attack. During the ensuing battle, the Indians killed five of the Parkers. In the chaos, the Indians abducted nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker and four other white women and children. The Commanche and Caddo bands later divided women and children between them. The Commanche took Parker, and she lived with them for the next 25 years.
Like many Plains Indian tribes, the Commanche had long engaged in the practice of kidnapping their enemy’s women and children. Sometimes these captives were treated like slaves who provided useful work and could be traded for valuable goods. Often, though, captives eventually became full-fledged members of the tribe, particularly if they were kidnapped as young children. Such was the case with Parker.
Anglo-Texans first learned that the young girl might still be alive four years later. A trader named Williams reported seeing Parker with a band of Commanche near the Canadian River in northern Texas. He tried to purchase her release but failed. The Commanche Chief Pahauka allowed Williams to speak to the girl, but she stared at the ground and refused to answer his questions. After four years, Parker apparently had become accustomed to Commanche ways and did not want to leave. In 1845, two other white men saw Parker, who was by then 17 years old. A Commanche warrior told them he was now her husband, and the men reported “she is unwilling to leave” and “she would run off and hide herself to avoid those who went to ransom her.”
Clearly, Parker had come to think of herself as Commanche. By all accounts, her husband, a rising young warrior named Peta Nocona, treated her well, and the couple was happily married. She gave birth to three children, two boys and a girl, and Nocona was reportedly so pleased with her that he rejected the common practice of taking several wives and remained monogamous.
Unfortunately, Nocona was also a warrior engaged in brutal war with the Anglo-American invaders, and he soon attracted the wrath of the Texas Rangers for leading several successful attacks on whites. In December 1860, a Ranger force attacked Nocona’s village. The Rangers mortally wounded Nocona and captured Parker and her daughter, Prairie Flower.
Returned to Anglo society against her will, Parker was taken to her uncle’s farm in Birdville, Texas, where she tried to run away several times. However, with her husband dead and her adopted people fighting a losing battle to survive, Parker apparently resigned herself to an unhappy life among a people she no longer understood. Prairie Flower, her one connection to her old life, died of influenza and pneumonia in 1863. Depressed and lonely, Parker struggled on for seven more years. Weakened by self-imposed starvation, she died of influenza in 1870.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 19 In History:
1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail for North America;
1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded on Tower Green after being convicted of adultery;
1588 – A massive Spanish fleet, known as the “Invincible Armada,” sets sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish invasion army to Britain from the Netherlands. In the late 1580s, Queen Elizabeth’s support of the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands led King Philip II of Spain to plan the conquest of England. A giant Spanish invasion fleet was completed by 1587, but Sir Francis Drake’s daring raid on the port of Cadiz delayed the Armada’s departure until May 1588. The Invincible Armada consisted of 130 ships and carried 2,500 guns and 30,000 men, two-thirds of them soldiers. Delayed by storms, the Armada did not reach the southern coast of England until late July. By that time the British were ready. Battered by storms and suffering from a lack of supplies, the Armada sailed on a difficult journey back to Spain through the North Sea and around Ireland. By the time the last of the surviving fleet reached Spain in October, half of the original armada was destroyed. Queen Elizabeth’s decisive defeat of the Invincible Armada made England a world-class naval power and introduced effective long-range weapons into naval warfare for the first time, ending the era of boarding and close-quarter fighting;
1635 – Cardinal Richelieu of France intervenes in the great conflict in Europe by declaring war on the Hapsburgs in Spain;
1643 – The French army defeats a Spanish army at Rocroi, France;
1715 – The colony of New York passes a law making it illegal to “gather, rake, take up, or bring to the market, any oysters whatsoever” between the months of May and September. This regulation was only one of many that were passed in the early days of America to help preserve certain species. In recent years, endangered species laws have been enacted in order to criminalize poaching for the protection of animals. However, earlier versions of these laws were more concerned with insuring that hunters would have a steady supply of game;
1749 – King George II of England grants the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land around the forks of the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by American colonists from Virginia. France had claimed the entire Ohio River Valley in the previous century, but English fur traders and settlers contested these claims. The royal chartering of the Ohio Company, an organization founded primarily by Virginian planters in 1747, directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754. In 1799 Ohio became a U.S. territory. In 1803, it entered the Union as the 17th state;
1780 – About midday, near-total darkness descends on much of New England to this day it’s cause is still unexplained although some believe it was caused by forest fires in Canada;
1795 – Josiah Bartlett, a New Hampshire Patriot and signatory of the Declaration of Independence who also served as the state’s governor and Supreme Court chief justice, dies;
1864 – In the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate armies launch their last attacks against each other at Spotsylvania, Virginia;
1864 – During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln writes to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on this day in 1864, proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race. Lincoln shared many of his friend Sumner’s views on civil rights. In an unprecedented move, Lincoln allowed a black woman, the widow of a black Civil War soldier, Major Lionel F. Booth, to meet with him at the White House. Mary Booth’s husband had been killed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee in April 1864 by a Confederate sniper. After speaking with Mrs. Booth privately, Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter of introduction for Mrs. Booth to carry to Sumner and asked him to hear what she had to say about the hardships imposed on families of black soldiers killed or maimed in battle. As a result of his meeting with Mrs. Booth, Senator Sumner influenced Congressional members in 1866 to introduce a resolution (H.R. 406, Section 13) to provide for the equal treatment of the dependents of black soldiers. According to the Library of Congress, though, there are no records that Mrs. Booth ever applied for or received a widow’s pension after the bill’s passage;
1864 – American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, 59, died in Plymouth, New Hampshire. “How slowly I have made my way in life! How much is still to be done!” — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864);
1913 – California Governor, Hiram Johnson, signed the Webb-Hartley Law prohibiting “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning farm land, a measure targeting Asian immigrants, particularly Japanese;
1916 – Representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reach an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire are to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I,
1921 – Congress passed, and President Warren G. Harding signed, the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants;
1928 – 51 frogs enter the first annual “Frog Jumping Jubilee” in Angel’s Camp, California;
1935 – T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before;
1943 – During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt set a date for the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day—May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, as bad weather becomes a factor. Addressing a joint session of Congress, Churchill warned that the real danger at present was the “dragging-out of the war at enormous expense” because of the risk that the Allies would become “tired or bored or split”—and play into the hands of Germany and Japan. He pushed for an early and massive attack on the “underbelly of the Axis.” And so, to “speed” things up, the British prime minister and President Roosevelt set a date for a cross-Channel invasion of Normandy, in northern France, for May 1, 1944, regardless of the problems presented by the invasion of Italy, which was underway. It would be carried out by 29 divisions, including a Free French division, if possible;
1958 – The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command commonly referred to as NORAD;
1962 – Actress Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday to You” to President John F. Kennedy during a Democratic fundraiser at New York’s Madison Square Garden. You can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqolSvoWNck;
1964 – During the (first) Cold War, United States diplomats find at least 40 microphones planted in the American embassy in Moscow;
1964 – During the Vietnam War, the United States initiates low-altitude target reconnaissance flights over southern Laos by U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft. Two days later, similar flights were commenced over northern Laos. These flights were code-named Yankee Team and were meant to assist the Royal Lao forces in their fight against the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese and Viet Cong allies;
1967 – During the (first) Cold War, one of the first major treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons goes into effect as the Soviet Union ratifies an agreement banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The United States, Great Britain, and several dozen other nations had already signed and/or ratified the treaty. With the advent of the so-called “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had begun in 1957 when the Russians successfully launched the Sputnik satellite, some began to fear that outer space might be the next frontier for the expansion of nuclear weapons. The agreement was yet another step toward limiting nuclear weapons. In 1959, dozens of nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, had agreed to ban nuclear weapons from Antarctica. In July 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, banning open-air and underwater nuclear tests. With the action taken in May 1967, outer space was also officially declared off-limits for nuclear weapons;
1972 – In the Vietnam War, units of South Vietnam’s 9th and 21st Divisions, along with several South Vietnamese airborne battalions, open new stretches of road south of An Loc and come within two miles of the besieged city. In the Central Highlands, North Vietnamese troops, preceded by heavy shelling, tried to break through the lines of South Vietnam’s 23rd Division defending Kontum, but the South Vietnamese troops held firm;
1973 – Secretariat won the Preakness Stakes, the second of its Triple Crown victories. You can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV89InWOENc;
1975 – A farm truck packed with a wedding party is struck by a train killing 66 people in the truck, 40 miles south of Poona, India;
1979 – “In The Navy” by Village People hits #3 on the charts. You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw;
1994 – Former first lady, widow of President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in New York at age 64;
1997 – A three-year-old boy dies of avian influenza in Hong Kong on this day in 1997. By the time the outbreak was controlled, six people were dead and 1.6 million domestic fowl were destroyed. The young boy, the first victim of the flu outbreak, had been hospitalized six days earlier with severe coughing and fever. He had been around chickens that were found to be infected with avian influenza. This virus, identified as flu type A(H5N1), had been found in chickens in March. Other people who worked with the chickens were immediately tested; some tested positive. More disturbingly, a health care worker, a lab technician and a neighbor–all of whom did not deal directly with chickens–also tested positive for this type of flu. By November, there were 18 recorded cases; six of the victims died. Finally, on December 28, authorities decided that it was necessary to slaughter the chickens and other domestic fowl in Hong Kong to prevent further spread of the disease. About 1.6 million animals were killed and buried. Though no other cases were reported immediately after the slaughter, officials continued to keep an eye on the virus. Over the next eight years, between 1997 and 2005, the H5N1 virus mutated, becoming extraordinarily lethal, and was responsible for 62 more human fatalities in Asia, as well as the deaths of more than 140 million birds, a portion of which were intentionally destroyed in an effort to contain it;
2004 – Army Reserve Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits wept and apologized after receiving a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge in the first court-martial stemming from abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison;
2009 – President Barack Obama asked consumers to back his plan for higher efficiency standards for cars and trucks, saying drivers would make up the higher cost of cleaner vehicles at the gas pump – (if only gas prices would stop rising due to ineffective economic policies!);
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
Number 14 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Cub Lake, Merry Lea Environmental Center, Indiana
Today, as I
A thought
I believe I have found out why righteousness is so hard to find … there aren’t many sowers! Heavenly wisdom is full of sacrificial earthly action. That’s a powerful reminder that wisdom is not what you know but what you sow!
Leads to a verse
So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless. Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”
– James 3:17-18
That brings a prayer
Oh Holy Father, thank you for demonstrating purity, peace making, consideration, submissiveness, mercy, good fruit, impartiality, and sincerity through your son, Jesus. I ask for the power and the courage to demonstrate these qualities this week as I seek to live like him. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!