Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 21, the 141st day of 2014 and there are 224 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 wonder why we don’t -…-
Heard anything in the news about a young United States Marine (HERO) who accidentally made a wrong turn on a confusing set of intersections and ended up in Mexico by complete innocent mistake? Heard anything about how the country of Mexico is treating our HONORABLE Marine like placing him in jail in shackles? (Yeah, me too!!!)
Why can’t we treat Mexican citizens who break our LAWS and enter OUR country ILLEGALLY just exactly the same as they treat an honest American hero; all 10 or 20 million of them however many it may be?
So, What Happened Today In 1863?
The Civil War siege of Port Hudson begins
In the American Civil War, Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Union Department of the Gulf, surrounds the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson, Louisiana and attacks. Fortifications were built at Port Hudson in 1863 to protect New Orleans from a Union attack down the Mississippi River. On April 25, 1862, New Orleans had fallen into Union hands following an attack from the Gulf of Mexico by Admiral David Farragut. Still, Port Hudson was considered an important installation for the South since it was a significant threat to Federal ships on the Mississippi River.
In 1863, the Union command began to focus attention on clearing the Mississippi of all Rebels. The major thrust of this effort was taking Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Confederate stronghold to the north of Port Hudson. In April, Ulysses S Grant summoned Nathaniel Banks to participate in the campaign against Vicksburg.
Banks wavered at first, preferring instead to wage an independent campaign against Confederates in Louisiana. But in May, he set out to take Port Hudson, then under the command of Franklin Gardner. Banks had some 30,000 troops under his command, while Gardner possessed a force of just 3,500. When Banks began to encircle Port Hudson, Gardner made some feeble attacks to drive him away.
On May 21, Gardner received orders from Joseph Johnston, operating in Mississippi, to abandon the fort. But Gardner refused, and asked for reinforcements. This was a fatal mistake, and Banks soon had Gardner surrounded. For the next three weeks, Banks attempted to capture Port Hudson but failed each time. It was not until Vicksburg surrendered on July 4 that Gardner also surrendered.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 21:
996 – Sixteen year old Otto III is crowned the Roman Emperor;
1471 – King Henry VI of England died in the Tower of London at age 49. Edward IV takes the throne;
1539 – Word reaches Fray Marcos that Indians have killed his guide Estevan, a black slave who was the first non-Indian to visit the pueblo lands of the American Southwest. Thought to have been born sometime around 1500 on the west coast of Morocco, Estevan was sold to the Spanish as a slave. He ended up in the hands of Andres Dorantes de Carranza, who took him on an ill-fated expedition to Florida in 1527. A series of disasters reduced the original exploratory party of 300 to four men: Estevan, Dorantes de Carranza, Cabeza de Vaca, and Alonso del Castillo. The four survivors lived with Indians on the Gulf of Mexico for several years before finally heading west in hopes of reaching Mexico City. With the assistance of Spanish slave hunters they encountered, they finally made it to Mexico City in 1536, where their amazing story of survival caused a sensation;
1542 – On the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto dies, ending a three-year journey for gold that took him halfway across what is now the United States. In order that Indians would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto’s claims of divinity, his men buried his body in the Mississippi River. In late May 1539, de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 600 troops, servants, and staff, 200 horses, and a pack of bloodhounds. From there, the army set about subduing the natives, seizing any valuables they stumbled upon, and preparing the region for eventual Spanish colonization. The Spaniards, now under the command of Luis de Moscoso, traveled west again, crossing into north Texas before returning to the Mississippi. With nearly half of the original expedition dead, the Spaniards built rafts and traveled down the river to the sea, and then made their way down the Texas coast to New Spain, finally reaching Veracruz, Mexico, in late 1543;
1758 – 10-year-old Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania by Lenape Indians; she becomes an icon of the French and Indian War and backcountry experience. Mary Campbell lived through the major turning points of late 18th-century America. She was a child taken captive during the imperial competition between Britain and France, an adolescent among the Indians as they attempted to reassert their rights to the American landscape and a woman among colonists as they fought to free themselves of the British empire. Mary wed in 1770 as colonial protests became violent and gave birth to seven children as her home, Pennsylvania, was reborn first as a state independent of Britain and then as part of a new nation;
1881 – In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912;
1901 – Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles, limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads. Speed limits had been set earlier in the United States for non-motorized vehicles. In 1652, the colony of New Amsterdam (now New York) issued a decree stating that “No wagons, carts or sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop” at the risk of incurring a fine starting at “two pounds Flemish,” or about $150 in today’s currency;
1924 – In a case that drew much notoriety, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” carried out by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (Bobby’s cousin). Both men received life sentences; Loeb was killed by a fellow prison inmate in 1936 while Leopold was paroled in 1958, dying in 1971;
1927 – American pilot Charles A. Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, successfully completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris. His single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, had lifted off from Roosevelt Field in New York 33 1/2 hours before. American pilot Charles A. Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, successfully completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris. His single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, had lifted off from Roosevelt Field in New York 33 1/2 hours before. In 1932, he was the subject of international headlines again when his infant son, Charles Jr., was kidnapped, unsuccessfully ransomed, and then found murdered in the woods near the Lindbergh home;
1932 – Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat the feat, landing her plane in Ireland after flying across the North Atlantic. Earhart traveled over 2,000 miles from Newfoundland in just under 15 hours. In 1935, in the first flight of its kind, she flew solo from Wheeler Field in Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California, winning a $10,000 award posted by Hawaiian commercial interests. Two years later, she attempted, along with copilot Frederick J. Noonan, to fly around the world, but her plane disappeared near Howland Island in the South Pacific on July 2, 1937. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca picked up radio messages that she was lost and low in fuel–the last the world ever heard from Amelia Earhart;
1940 – During World War II, a “special unit” carries out its mission-and murders more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia. Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed “unfit” by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been “successfully evacuated”;
1941 – In World War II, a German U-boat sank the American merchant steamship SS Robin Moor in the South Atlantic after the ship’s passengers and crew were allowed to board lifeboats;
1942 – In World War II, 4,300 Jews are deported from the Polish town of Chelm to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, where all are gassed to death. On the same day, the German firm IG Farben sets up a factory just outside Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of Jewish slave laborers from the Auschwitz concentration camps. Sobibor had five gas chambers, where about 250,000 Jews were killed between 1942 and 1943. A camp revolt occurred in October 1943; 300 Jewish slave laborers rose up and killed several members of the SS as well as Ukrainian guards. The rebels were killed as they battled their captors or tried to escape. The remaining prisoners were executed the very next day. IG Farben, as well as exploiting Jewish slave labor for its oil and rubber production, also performed drug experiments on inmates. Tens of thousands of prisoners would ultimately die because of brutal work conditions and the savagery of the guards;
1951 – In the Korean War, the United States Eighth Army counterattacks to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea;
1955 – John Lennon once famously said that “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.'” That’s how foundational Berry’s contributions were to the music that changed America and the world beginning in the mid-1950s. Even more than Elvis Presley, who was an incomparable performer, but of other people’s songs, Chuck Berry created the do-it-yourself template that most rock-and-rollers still seek to follow. If there can be said to be a single day on which his profound influence on the sound and style of rock and roll began, it was this day in 1955, when an unknown Chuck Berry paid his first visit to a recording studio and cut the record that would make him famous: “Maybellene” – You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw7IJyJGJRg;
1960 – The first tremor of a series hits Valdivia, Chile. By the time they end, the quakes and their aftereffects kill 5,000 people and leave another 2 million homeless. Registering a magnitude of 7.6, the first earthquake was powerful and killed several people. It turned out to be only a foreshock, however, to one of the most powerful tremors ever recorded. At 3:11 p.m. the following afternoon, an 8.5-magnitude quake rocked southern Chile. The epicenter of this tremendous shaking was just off the coast under the Pacific Ocean. There, the Nazca oceanic plate plunged 50 feet down under the South American plate. The earthquake caused huge landslides of debris down the mountains of the region, as well as a series of tsunamis in the coastal region of Chile. At 4:20 p.m., a 26-foot wave hit the shore, taking most structures and buildings with it when it receded. But the worst was still to come. Minutes later, a slower 35-foot wave rolled in; it is estimated that this wave killed more than 1,000 people, including those who had thought they had moved safely to high ground;
1968 – The nuclear-powered submarine, USS Scorpion (SSN-589), with 99 men aboard is reported missing. It is later found at the bottom of the ocean off Azores;
1969 – A U.S. military command spokesman in Saigon defends the battle for Ap Bia Mountain as having been necessary to stop enemy infiltration and protect the city of Hue. The spokesman stated that the battle was an integral part of the policy of “maximum pressure” that U.S. forces had been pursuing for the prior six months, and confirmed that no orders had been received from President Nixon to modify that basic strategy. On May 20, the battle, described in the American media as the battle for “Hamburger Hill,” had come under attack in Congress from Senator Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who described the action as “senseless and irresponsible.” On May 22 in Phu Bai, South Vietnam, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division that took “Hamburger Hill,” responded to continuing media criticism by saying that his orders had been “to destroy enemy forces” in the A Shau Valley and that he had not received any other orders to reduce casualties by avoiding battles. The news of the battle resulted in widespread public outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives. The situation was exacerbated by pictures published in Life magazine of 241 U.S. soldiers killed during the week of the battle. Subsequently, Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was ordered to avoid such battles. Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, U.S. emphasis was placed on “Vietnamization” (turning the war over to the South Vietnamese forces), rather than direct combat operations;
1972 – Michelangelo’s Pieta, on display at the Vatican, was damaged by a hammer-wielding man who shouted he was Jesus Christ;
1982 – During the Falkland War between Great Britain and Argentina, British amphibious forces landed on the beach at San Carlos Bay;
1988 – During the (first) Cold War, in an attempt to consolidate his own power and ease political and ethnic tensions in the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev dismisses the Communist Party leaders in those two republics. Since coming to power in 1985, Gorbachev had faced numerous problems with his efforts to bring about domestic reform in the Soviet Union. First and foremost was the opposition by more conservative Russian officials, who believed that Gorbachev’s economic and political reforms might threaten the position of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s action was only a temporary solution to the problems. During the next three years, the slow pace of reform in the Soviet Union could not keep up with the rapidly crumbling economy and increasingly factionalized political system. And ethnic tensions in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and other Soviet republics continued unabated, sometimes exploding into violence. By 1991, it was clear that the Soviet Union was falling apart. In December, Gorbachev resigned as president and the Soviet Union soon thereafter ceased to exist as a nation;
1991 – Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber;
1992 – Amy Fisher, the so-called “Long Island Lolita,” is arrested for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the front porch of her Massapequa, New York home. Fisher, only 17 at the time of the shooting, was having an affair with 38-year-old Joey Buttafuoco, Mary Jo’s husband. The tawdry story soon became a tabloid and talk-show fixture, the source of three television movies, and countless jokes. Mary Jo Buttafuoco survived the attack but was left with a bullet lodged in her head and a partially paralyzed face. Fisher, who pled guilty to the shooting, was convicted of assault and received a sentence of 5 to 15 years the following year. Mary Jo called her a “prostitute,” yet seemed to think her husband was blameless in the affair. The courts, however, were less forgiving; Joey was convicted of statutory rape and received a six-month jail sentence in 1993;
2000 – The bones of President James Garfield’s spine are on display for a final day as part of the Out of the Blue Closets exhibit at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The exhibit featured medical oddities from the museum’s archives. The British medical journal The Lancet published a story about the exhibit in May 2000. Among many other medical curiosities, the display featured President Garfield’s spinal column that showed exactly where one out of two assassin’s bullets had passed through it on July 2, 1881. The first bullet grazed Garfield’s arm. The second bullet lodged below his pancreas. Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of Garfield’s physicians at the time, tried to use an early version of a metal detector to find the second bullet, but failed;
2004 – The United Nations Security Council approved a peacekeeping force of 5,600 troops for Burundi to help the African nation finally end a 10-year civil war;
2009 – A day after the Senate voted to keep the Guantanamo prison camp open, President Barack Obama made his case for closing the facility, denouncing what he called “fear-mongering” by political opponents; Obama made his case moments before former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered his own address defending the Bush administration’s creation of the camp;
2013 – Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told the Senate Finance Committee he first learned in the spring of 2012 that agents had improperly targeted political groups that vehemently opposed President Barack Obama’s policies, saying he decided to let the inspector general look into the matter;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Number 16 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Cimarron National Grassland, Morton County, Kansas
As I close, I
While a thought
If people in our church congregations are ever going to get along, the leaders of those churches must remind us of how important it is to remember Jesus’ dying prayer was that we would be one. Why? So the world would know that the Father had sent him. Unity is not important, it is essential; not just as a theory or theology, but as a daily practice among the people who claim Jesus is our Lord.
Leads to a verse
I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.
– 1 Corinthians 1:10
That brings a prayer
Lord Jesus, you have presented all of my prayers to our Father and I thank you for this grace. I promise that I will do all I can to bring glory of our Father, to live at peace and to serve in unity with those who belong to you. Please bless our church family with more passion for the unity that you desire. In Jesus’ name and through the blessed Holy Spirit I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
