Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 2, the 122nd day of 2014 and there are 243 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 !!!
Just thinkin to myself – 
So, What Happened Today In 1933?
Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster is sighted
Although accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.
Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain; the body of water reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and a length of about 23 miles. Scholars of the Loch Ness Monster find a dozen references to “Nessie” in Scottish history, dating back to around A.D. 500, when local Picts carved a strange aquatic creature into standing stones near Loch Ness. The earliest written reference to a monster in Loch Ness is a 7th-century biography of Saint Columba, the Irish missionary who introduced Christianity to Scotland. In 565, according to the biographer, Columba was on his way to visit the king of the northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped at Loch Ness to confront a beast that had been killing people in the lake. Seeing a large beast about to attack another man, Columba intervened, invoking the name of God and commanding the creature to “go back with all speed.” The monster retreated and never killed another man.
In 1933, a new road was completed along Loch Ness’ shore, affording drivers a clear view of the loch. After an April 1933 sighting was reported in the local paper on May 2, interest steadily grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the beast on land, crossing the shore road. Several British newspapers sent reporters to Scotland, including London’s Daily Mail, which hired big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to capture the beast. After a few days searching the loch, Wetherell reported finding footprints of a large four-legged animal. In response, the Daily Mail carried the dramatic headline: “MONSTER OF LOCH NESS IS NOT LEGEND BUT A FACT.” Scores of tourists descended on Loch Ness and sat in boats or decks chairs waiting for an appearance by the beast. Plaster casts of the footprints were sent to the British Natural History Museum, which reported that the tracks were that of a hippopotamus, specifically one hippopotamus foot, probably stuffed. The hoax temporarily deflated Loch Ness Monster mania, but stories of sightings continued.
A famous 1934 photograph seemed to show a dinosaur-like creature with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters, leading some to speculate that “Nessie” was a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs. The aquatic plesiosaurs were thought to have died off with the rest of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Loch Ness was frozen solid during the recent ice ages, however, so this creature would have had to have made its way up the River Ness from the sea in the past 10,000 years. And the plesiosaurs, believed to be cold-blooded, would not long survive in the frigid waters of Loch Ness. More likely, others suggested, it was an archeocyte, a primitive whale with a serpentine neck that is thought to have been extinct for 18 million years. Skeptics argued that what people were seeing in Loch Ness were “seiches”–oscillations in the water surface caused by the inflow of cold river water into the slightly warmer loch.
Amateur investigators kept an almost constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched expeditions to Loch Ness, using sonar to search the deep. Nothing conclusive was found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected large, moving underwater objects they could not explain. In 1975, Boston’s Academy of Applied Science combined sonar and underwater photography in an expedition to Loch Ness. A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature. Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in more tantalizing, if inconclusive, readings. Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo was a hoax hardly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists and professional and amateur investigators to the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.
(Writers note: While stationed for a short year at the very northern tip of Scotland at a small U.S. Naval Radio Station in Thurso in the mid-1970s, I had the opportunity to drive this road alongside Loch Ness. While I never had the opportunity to meet ‘Nessie’, it is a very beautiful drive. If you’re ever there, take the opportunity to do the same; very rewarding!)
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 2 In History:
1519 – Infamous artist Leonardo da Vinci died at Cloux, France, at age 67;
1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company, made up of the group of French explorers who opened the lucrative North American fur trade to London merchants. The charter conferred on them not only a trading monopoly but also effective control over the vast region surrounding North America’s Hudson Bay. Although contested by other English traders and the French in the region, the Hudson’s Bay Company was highly successful in exploiting what would become eastern Canada. After Canada was granted dominion status in 1867, the company lost its monopoly on the fur trade, but it had diversified its business ventures and remained Canada’s largest corporation through the 1920s;
1740 – American patriot Elias Boudinot is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Boudinot would serve in numerous positions during the War for Independence, culminating in his role as president of the Continental Congress from 1782 to1783. As president, he signed the Treaty of Paris, ending hostilities with Great Britain. During Boudinot’s term as president from November 1782 to November 1783, Congress was forced to flee Philadelphia. As a member of the Board of Trustees for the College of New Jersey, Boudinot arranged to have Congress temporarily meet in the school’s Nassau Hall in Princeton. After the War of Independence, Boudinot went on to represent New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives and served as director of the United States Mint under Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. Later, Boudinot advocated for the rights of African-Americans and Indians as president of the American Bible Society;
1776 – During the American Revolutionary War, France and Spain agree to donate arms to American rebels fighting the British;
1808 – During the Peninsular War, a popular uprising against the French occupation of Spain begins in Madrid, culminating in a fierce battle fought out in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s central square. The Spanish rebels were defeated, and during the night the French army under Grand Duke Joachim Murat shot hundreds of citizens along the Prado promenade in reprisal. In August, a British expeditionary force under Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, landed on the Portuguese coast to expel the French from the Iberian Peninsula. By mid 1809, the French were driven from Portugal, but Spain proved more elusive. Thus began a long series of seesaw campaigns between the French and British in Spain, where the British were aided by small bands of Spanish irregulars known as guerrillas. Finally, on June 21, 1813, allied forces under Wellesley routed the French forces of Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean Jourdan at Vitoria, Spain. By October, the Iberian Peninsula was liberated, and Wellesley launched an invasion of France. The allies had penetrated France as far as Toulouse when news of Napoleon’s abdication reached them in April 1814, ending the Peninsular War;
1863 – During the American Civil War, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson administers a devastating defeat to the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia. In one of the most stunning upsets of the war, a vastly outnumbered Army of Northern Virginia sent the Army of the Potomac, commanded by General Joseph Hooker, back to Washington, D.C. in defeat. Despite the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Union forces soon gained the upper hand in the war in the eastern theater. Scouting in front of the lines as they returned in the dark, Jackson and his aides were fired upon by their own troops. Jackson’s arm was amputated the next morning, and he never recovered. He died from complications a week later, leaving Lee without his most able lieutenant;
1865 – Shortly after the end of the American Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson offers a $100,000 reward for the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis;
1908 – The original version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” with music by Albert Von Tilzer and lyrics by Jack Norworth, was published by Von Tilzer’s York Music Company. You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-gsdLSSQ0;
1918 – During World War I, in a conference of Allied military leaders at Abbeville, France, the U.S., Britain and France argue over the entrance of American troops into World War I. On March 23, two days after the launch of a major German offensive in northern France, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George telegraphed the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Reading, urging him to explain to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson that without help from the U.S., “we cannot keep our divisions suppliedfor more than a short time at the present rate of loss.This situation is undoubtedly critical and if America delays now she may be too late.” In response, Wilson agreed to send a direct order to the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force, General John J. Pershing, telling him that American troops already in France should join British and French divisions immediately, without waiting for enough soldiers to arrive to form brigades of their own. Pershing agreed to this on April 2, providing a boost in morale for the exhausted Allies;
1936 – “Peter and the Wolf,” a symphonic tale for children by Sergei Prokofiev, had its world premiere in Moscow;
1942 – United States Navy Admiral Chester J. Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese will attack Midway Island, visits the island to review its readiness;
1945 – At the end of World War II in the European theater, approximately 1 million German soldiers lay down their arms as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta on April 29, come into effect. Many Germans surrender to Japanese soldiers; Japanese Americans. Among the American tank crews that entered the northern Italian town of Biella was an all-Nisei (second-generation) infantry battalion, composed of Japanese Americans from Hawaii. Early that same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepts the surrender of the German capital. The Red Army takes 134,000 German soldiers prisoner;
1957 – During the (first) Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) succumbs to illness exacerbated by alcoholism and passes away at age 48. McCarthy had been a key figure in the anticommunist hysteria popularly known as the “Red Scare” that engulfed the United States in the years following World War II. He died in Bethesda, Maryland and was buried in his home state of Wisconsin;
1964 – During the Vietnam War, an explosion of a charge assumed to have been placed by Viet Cong terrorists sinks the USNS Card at its dock in Saigon. No one was injured and the ship was eventually raised and repaired. The Card, an escort carrier being used as an aircraft and helicopter ferry, had arrived in Saigon on April 30;
1964 – American-born Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the first woman to serve in the British Parliament, died in Lincolnshire, England, at age 84;
1968 – During the Vietnam War, U.S. Army forces attack Nhi Ha in South Vietnam and begins a fourteen-day battle to wrestle it away from Vietnamese Communists;
1970 – In the Vietnam War, American and South Vietnamese forces continue the attack into Cambodia that began on April 29. This limited “incursion” into Cambodia (as it was described by Richard Nixon) included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967;
1972 – An electrical fire at the Sunshine silver mine in Kellogg, Idaho, claimed the lives of 91 workers who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning;
1972 – After nearly five decades as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover dies, leaving the powerful government agency without the administrator who had been largely responsible for its existence and shape;
1980 – General Motors Corporation (GM), which will become the world’s largest automotive firm, acquires Chevrolet Motor Company;
1982 – During the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina, the British submarine HMS Conqueror (S48) sinks the Argentine light cruiser ARA General Belgrano killing more than 350 men;
1997 – A sandstorm sweeps across much of Egypt, causing widespread damage and killing 12 people. Most of the casualties were victims of the strong winds, which also toppled trees and buildings. The storm began in Libya and blew swiftly northeast across nearly the entire nation of Egypt. The 60-mile-per-hour winds caused car accidents, uprooted trees and downed power lines;
2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military;
2009 – The Dallas Cowboys’ tent-like practice structure collapsed during a severe storm in Irving, Texas; a dozen people were hurt, including scouting assistant Rich Behm, who was left paralyzed from the waist down, and special teams coach Joe DeCamillis, whose neck was broken;
2009 – ‘Mine That Bird‘, a race horse from New Mexico with a 50-1 shot, stunned the field by capturing the Kentucky Derby;
2011 – Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States is killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan. The notorious, 54-year-old leader of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network of Islamic extremists, had been the target of a nearly decade-long international manhunt. The raid began around 1 a.m. local time, when 23 U.S. Navy SEALs in two Black Hawk helicopters descended on the compound in Abbottabad, a tourist and military center north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. One of the helicopters crash-landed into the compound but no one aboard was hurt. During the raid, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, five people, including bin Laden and one of his adult sons, were killed by U.S. gunfire. No Americans were injured in the assault. Afterward, bin Laden’s body was flown by helicopter to Afghanistan for official identification, then buried at an undisclosed location in the Arabian Sea less than 24 hours after his death, in accordance with Islamic practice. The U.S. media had long reported bin Laden was believed to be hiding in the remote tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border, so many Americans were surprised to learn the world’s most famous fugitive had likely spent the last five years of his life in a well-populated area less than a mile from an elite Pakistani military academy;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
Today’s Word with Power
Today, as I
A thought
Confidence before God. That’s sort of an oxymoron if you meditate upon it. Yet through the presence of Jesus at the Father’s right hand and the intercession of the Holy Spirit, we can have confidence and come boldly before the Creator of the universe and know that he not only hears us, but also cares for us. Wow, what an audience! Oh, and one final thing, he also ACTS on what we ask!
Which brings a verse
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.
– 1 John 5:14-15
That brings a prayer
My Gracious Father, for the grace of your listening ear I thank you more than words can say. Through the authority of Jesus my brother and by the grace of your interceding Holy Spirit, I offer you my thanks and love this day. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
