Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 25, the 145th day of 2014 and there are 220 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 !!!
So, What Happened Today In 1787?
Constitutional Convention convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
With George Washington presiding, the Constitutional Convention formally convenes on this day in 1787. The convention faced a daunting task: the peaceful overthrow of the new American government as it had been defined by the Article of Confederation.
The process began with the proposal of James Madison’s Virginia Plan. Madison had dedicated the winter of 1787 to the study of confederacies throughout history and arrived in Philadelphia with a wealth of knowledge and an idea for a new American government. Virginia’s governor, Edmund Randolph, presented Madison’s plan to the convention. It featured a bicameral legislature, with representation in both houses apportioned to states based upon population; this was seen immediately as giving more power to large states, like Virginia. The two houses would in turn elect the executive and the judiciary and would possess veto power over the state legislatures. Madison’s conception strongly resembled Britain’s parliament. It omitted any discussion of taxation or regulation of trade, however; these items had been set aside in favor of outlining a new form of government altogether.
William Patterson soon countered with a plan more attractive to the new nation’s smaller states. It too bore the imprint of America’s British experience. Under the New Jersey Plan, as it became known, each state would have a single vote in Congress as it had been under the Articles of Confederation, to even out power between large and small states. But, the plan also gave Congress new powers: the collection of import duties and a stamp tax, the regulation of trade and the enforcement of requisitions upon the states with military force.
Alexander Hamilton then put forward to the delegates a third plan, a perfect copy of the British Constitution including an upper house and legislature that would serve on good behavior.
Confronted by three counter-revolutionary options, the representatives of Connecticut finally came up with a workable compromise: a government with an upper house made up of equal numbers of delegates from each state and a lower house with proportional representation based upon population. This idea formed the basis of the new U.S. Constitution, which became the law of the land in 1789.
Today the U.S. Constitution is the oldest written national constitution in operation in the world.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 25 In History:
585 BC – Thales of Greece makes the first known prediction of a solar eclipse;
1085 – Alfonso VI takes Toledo, Spain from the Muslims;
1660 – During the English Civil War, under invitation by leaders of the English Commonwealth, Charles II, the exiled king of England, lands at Dover, England, to assume the throne and end 11 years of military rule. Prince of Wales at the time of the war, Charles fled to France after Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians defeated King Charles I’s Royalists in 1646. In 1649, Charles vainly attempted to save his father’s life by presenting Parliament a signed blank sheet of paper, thereby granting whatever terms were required. However, Oliver Cromwell was determined to execute Charles I, and on January 30, 1649, the king was beheaded in London. In 1660, in what is known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles and arranged to restore him in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious toleration for his former enemies. On May 25, 1660, Charles landed at Dover and four days later entered London in triumph. It was his 30th birthday, and London rejoiced at his arrival. In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn;
1793 – In Baltimore, Maryland, Father Stephen Theodore Badin becomes the first Catholic priest to be ordained in the United States. Badin was ordained by Bishop John Carroll, an early advocate of American Catholicism, and appointed to the Catholic mission in Kentucky;
1810 – Argentina began its revolt against Spanish rule with the forming of the Primera Junta in Buenos Aires;
1861 – During the American Civil War, John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the war and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities. This was not the first or last time that the U.S. federal government willfully ignored its own laws during times of strife. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II. Some forty years later, a U.S. congressional commission determined that those held in the camps had been victims of discrimination. Each camp survivor was awarded $20,000 in compensation from the U.S. government;
1862 – In the American Civil War, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson notches a victory at the First Battle of Winchester, Virginia as part of his brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson, with 17,000 troops under his command, was sent to the Shenandoah to relieve pressure on the Confederate troops near Richmond, Virginia, who were facing the growing force of George McClellan on the James Peninsula. In early May, Jackson struck John C. Fremont’s force at McDowell, in western Virginia. After driving Fremont out of the area, Jackson turned his attention to an army under the command of Nathaniel Banks, situated at the north end of the Shenandoah Valley. On May 25, Jackson found Banks outside of Winchester. He attacked the Union force but was initially repulsed. The Confederates then struck each Union flank, and this time the Yankee line broke. A confused retreat ensued through the town of Winchester, and even some residents fired on the departing Yankees. Banks fled the Shenandoah into Maryland and Jackson continued his rampage. The numbers from Jackson’s 1862 valley campaign are stunning. His men marched 350 miles in a month; occupied 60,000 Yankee troops, preventing them from applying pressure on Richmond; won four battles against three armies; and inflicted twice as many casualties as they suffered. Jackson’s record cemented his reputation as one of the greatest generals of all time;
1895 – Playwright Oscar Wilde is taken to Reading Gaol in London after being convicted of sodomy. The famed writer of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest brought attention to his private life in a feud with Sir John Sholto Douglas, whose son was intimately involved with Wilde. Homosexuality was a criminal offense and serious societal taboo at this time in Britain. The judge remarked at his sentencing, “It is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years.” Wilde served his two years and then spent the last three years of his life in exile. He died at the age of 45 and was buried in Paris;
1914 – The British House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule;
1915 – During World War I, in the latest of a disturbing series of Turkish aggressions against Armenians during the war, Mehmed Talat, the Ottoman minister of the interior, announces that all Armenians living near the battlefield zones in eastern Anatolia (under Ottoman rule) will be deported to Syria and Mosul. Large-scale deportations began five days later, after the decision was sanctioned by the Ottoman council of ministers. It is impossible to state exactly how many Armenians died in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, due in part to the uncertainty about how many were living there before the war. The number of dead—and the degree of intent and responsibility of the Turkish government—is disputed to this day: some calculations range from 1.3 million to about 2.1 million, and others are much lower. It seems, though, that estimates of one million are reasonable;
1935 – Track and field athlete, Jesse Owens, sets six world records in less than an hour in Ann Arbor, Michigan;
1935 – At Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Babe Ruth hits his 714th home run, a record for career home runs that would stand for almost 40 years. This was one of Ruth’s last games, and the last home run of his career. Ruth went four for four on the day, hitting three home runs and driving in six runs. Ruth died of throat cancer on August 16, 1948. His record for career home runs was not broken until Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, 39 years later;
1944 – In World War II, Germany launches Operation Knight’s Move, in an attempt to seize Yugoslav communist partisan leader Tito. Using parachute drops and glider troops, German forces landed in the Yugoslavian village of Drvar, where Josep Broz Tito, leader of the anti-Axis guerilla movement, was believed to be. The village was decimated: Men, women, and children were all killed by German troops in search of Tito, who escaped;
1944 – During World War Ii, a revolt breaks out at the extermination camp at Auschwitz. As several hundred Hungarian Jews were being led to a gas chamber in Birkenau (a supplementary camp, part of the Auschwitz complex known as Auschwitz II), the prisoners ran into the woods, suspecting their fate. Searchlights flooded the surrounding area, enabling the SS, who controlled the camp, to shoot all those who fled. This was the second such revolt in three days;
1946 – Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, Abdullah I;
1961 – President John F. Kennedy announces to Congress his goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of the decade and asks for financial support of an accelerated space program. He made the task a national priority and a mission in which all Americans would share, stating that it will not be one man going to the moonit will be an entire nation. Kennedy’s vision did not become a reality until six years after his assassination. On July 20, 1969, then-President Richard Nixon watched with the world while Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. Just after Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon, President Nixon contacted Armstrong via phone to congratulate him on behalf of all Americans saying I just can’t tell you how proud we are;
1964 – The United States Supreme Court, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, ordered the Virginia county to reopen its public schools, which officials had closed in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka public school desegregation ruling;
1968 – In the Vietnam War, the communists launch their third major assault of the year on Saigon. The heaviest fighting occurred during the first three days of June, and again centered on Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon, where U.S. and South Vietnamese forces used helicopters, fighter-bombers, and tanks to dislodge deeply entrenched Viet Cong infiltrators. A captured enemy directive, which the U.S. command made public on May 28, indicated that the Viet Cong saw the offensive as a means of influencing the Paris peace talks in their favor;
1968 – Unicorn by The Irish Rovers hits #7 – You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeU6hJn_YpM;
1968 – The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was dedicated by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall;
1969 – During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu assumes personal leadership of the National Social Democratic Front at its inaugural meeting in Saigon. Thieu said the establishment of this coalition party was “the first concrete step in unifying the political factions in South Vietnam for the coming political struggle with the communists,” and emphasized that the new party would not be “totalitarian or despotic.” The six major parties comprising the NSDF coalition were: the Greater Union Force, composed largely of militant Roman Catholic refugees from North Vietnam; the Social Humanist Party, successor to the Can Lao party, which had held power under the Ngo Dinh Diem regime; the Revolutionary Dai Viet, created to fight the French; the Social Democratic Party, a faction of the Hoa Hao religious sect; the United Vietnam Kuomintang, formed as an anti-French party; and the People’s Alliance for Social Revolution, a pro-government bloc formed in 1968;
1975 – The grizzly bear–once the undisputed king of the western wilderness–is given federal protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Before the Anglo-Americans began invading their territory, the grizzly bear inhabited most of the country west of the Mississippi from Mexico north to the Arctic Circle. Its only serious competitors for food were the Native Americans who considered it a sacred animal-although they did hunt the bear as a test of strength and its long claws were prized symbols of status. Protected from hunting and trapping, grizzly populations have slowly begun to recover. However, there are still probably fewer than 1,000 grizzlies in the lower 48 states today, nearly half of them in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. Recently, plans to reintroduce the species into two wilderness areas in Idaho and Washington have met with controversy. The future of the grizzly bear will depend on human willingness to share their habitats with the bears and set aside areas of wilderness large enough for them to survive;
1977 – During the (first) Cold War, a new sign of political liberalization appears in China, when the communist government lifts its decade-old ban on the writings of William Shakespeare. The action by the Chinese government was additional evidence that the Cultural Revolution was over. Together with the announcement that the ban was lifted, the Chinese government also stated that a Chinese-language edition of the Bard’s works would soon be available;
1979 – Almost 300 people are killed on this day in 1979 when an American Airlines flight crashes and explodes after losing one engine just after takeoff. It was the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend in 1979 when 277 passengers filled Flight 191 from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport bound for Los Angeles. The DC-10 jet took off normally but after rising to only 400 feet, stalled and then rolled to the left. The plane quickly plunged, crashing into Ravenswood Airport, which had been abandoned and was no longer in use;
1986 – The ferry boat ‘Shamia’ sinks on Maghna River Bangladesh killing 600;
1992 – Jay Leno made his debut as host of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” succeeding Johnny Carson;
1994 – In Pennsylvania, the ashes of 71-year-old George Swanson are buried (according to Swanson’s request) in the driver’s seat of his 1984 white Corvette in Hempfield County. Swanson, a beer distributor and former U.S. Army sergeant during World War II, died the previous March 31 at the age of 71. He had reportedly been planning his automobile burial for some time, buying 12 burial plots at Brush Creek Cemetery, located 25 miles east of Pittsburgh, in order to ensure that his beloved Corvette would fit in his grave with him. “George always said he lived a fabulous life, and he wanted to go out in a fabulous style,” Caroline Swanson said later. “You have a lot of people saying they want to take it with them. He took it with him”;
2004 – The Boston Archdiocese said it would close 65 of 357 parishes, an offshoot of the clergy sex abuse scandal;
2009 – North Korea claimed to have carried out a powerful underground nuclear test; President Barack Obama called on the world to “stand up to” Pyongyang and demand it honor a promise to abandon its nuclear ambitions;
2009 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, long a fierce critic of Beijing, toured China’s financial capital of Shanghai but stayed clear of human rights issues;
2011 – Germany determines it must shut down part of its airspace as volcanic ash from Iceland’s Grisvotn eruption spreads through northern Europe;
2012 – The first commercial spacecraft, SpaceX Dragon, docks with the International Space Station when it completes docking at 12:02pm EDT;
2013 – Making his first official trip to sub-Saharan Africa, United States Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Nigeria respect human rights as it cracked down on Islamist extremists and pledged to work hard in the coming months to ease tensions between Sudan and South Sudan. (Should we applaud and congratulate secretary Kerry for helping the extremists efforts – now known as BOKO HARUM?!? – Boy, did we ever need a #hashtag picture from the White House when he did this!!!);
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Number 20 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Route 40 – Exit 52, east of Cumberland, Maryland
As I
A thought
Have a brake on your tongue; hit the throttle on your ears. Let your angry email sit three days before you send it. Keep you mouth shut and your ears open. They all say the same thing. Now if we would just do it, wouldn’t the Christian community so much more blessed!
Leads to a verse
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters; You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.
– James 1:19-20
That brings a prayer
My Righteous and Holy God, you are incredible — beyond my comprehending. How you put up with all the drivel, senseless and hurtful speech that I and your other children spew out is beyond my understanding. I ask that you release the Holy Spirit to convict my heart and guard my lips from any form of hurtful speech. I want my voice to be as much yours as my heart is. This I pray in Jesus name. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!