Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 28, the 148th day of 2014 and there are 217 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 !!!
Oh So True
“Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it, until it has passed over us and taken with it a part of ourselves.”
– John Burroughs, American author and naturalist (1837-1921)
So, What Happened Today In 1754?
The first blood is drawn in the French & Indian War
In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeats a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington’s men was killed.
The French and Indian War was the last and most important of a series of colonial conflicts between the British and the American colonists on one side, and the French and their broad network of Native American allies on the other. Fighting began in the spring of 1754, but Britain and France did not officially declare war against each other until May 1756 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War in Europe.
In November 1752, at the age of 20, George Washington was appointed adjutant in the Virginia colonial militia, which involved the inspection, mustering, and regulation of various militia companies. In November 1753, he first gained public notice when he volunteered to carry a message from Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie to the French moving into the Ohio Valley, warning them to leave the territory, which was claimed by the British crown. Washington succeeded in the perilous wilderness journey and brought back an alarming message: The French intended to stay.
In 1754, Dinwiddie appointed Washington a lieutenant colonel and sent him out with 160 men to reinforce a colonial post at what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before Washington could reach it, however, it was given up without bloodshed to the French, who renamed it Fort Duquesne. Washington moved within about 40 miles of the French position and set about building a new post at Great Meadows, which he named Fort Necessity. From this base, he ambushed an advance detachment of about 30 French, striking the first blow of the French and Indian War. For the victory, Washington was appointed a full colonel and reinforced with several hundred Virginia and North Carolina troops.
On July 3, the French descended on Fort Necessity with their full force, and after an all-day fight Washington surrendered to their superior numbers. The disarmed colonials were allowed to march back to Virginia, and Washington was hailed as a hero despite his surrender of the fort. The story of the campaign was written up in a London gazette, and Washington was quoted as saying, “I have heard the bullets whistle; and believe me, there is something charming in the sound.” Reading this, King George II remarked, “He would not say so if he had been used to hear many.”
In October 1754, Washington resigned his commission in protest of the British underpayment of colonial offices and policy of making them subordinate to all British officers, regardless of rank. In early 1755, however, British General Edward Braddock and his army arrived to Virginia, and Washington agreed to serve as Braddock’s personal aide-de-camp, with the courtesy title of colonel. The subsequent expedition against Fort Duquesne was a disaster, but Washington fought bravely and succeeded in bringing the survivors back after Braddock and 1,000 others were killed.
With the western frontier of Virginia now dangerously exposed, Governor Dinwiddie appointed Washington commander in chief of all Virginia forces in August 1755. During the next three years, Washington struggled with the problems of frontier defense but participated in no major engagements until he was put in command of a Virginia regiment participating in a large British campaign against Fort Duquesne in 1758. The French burned and abandoned the fort before the British and Americans arrived, and Fort Pitt was raised on its site. With Virginia’s strategic objective attained, Washington resigned his commission with the honorary rank of brigadier general. He returned to a planter’s life and took a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses.
The French and Indian War raged on elsewhere in North America for several years. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763, France lost all claims to the mainland of North America east of the Mississippi and gave up Louisiana, including New Orleans, to Spain. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of their North American empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots, despite the fact that the Patriots were led by one of France’s old enemies, George Washington.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 28 In History:
585 BC – A solar eclipse interrupts a battle outside of Sardis in western Turkey between Medes and Lydians. The battle ends in a draw;
1533 – In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid;
1830 – The United States Congress authorizes Indian removal from all states to the western Prairie;
1863 – During the American Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the most famous African-American regiment of the war, leaves Boston for combat in the South. For the first two years of the war, President Abraham Lincoln resisted the use of black troops despite the pleas of men such as Frederick Douglass, who argued that no one had more to fight for than African Americans. Lincoln finally endorsed, albeit timidly, the introduction of blacks for service in the military in the Emancipation Proclamation. On May 22, 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops to recruit and assemble black regiments. Many blacks, often freed or escaped slaves, joined the military and found themselves usually under white leadership. Ninety percent of all officers in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were white. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the idealistic scion of an abolitionist family, headed the 54th. Shaw was a veteran of the 2nd Massachusetts infantry and saw action in the 1862 Shenandoah Valley and Antietam campaigns. After being selected by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew to organize and lead the 54th, Shaw carefully selected the most physically fit soldiers and white officers with established antislavery views. The regiment included two of Frederick Douglass’s sons and the grandson of Sojourner Truth;
1902 – Owen Wister’s The Virginian is published by Macmillan Press. It was the first “serious” Western and one of the most influential in the genre. Almost single-handedly, The Virginian turned the American cowboy into a legendary hero. The book became a sensation almost overnight, selling more than 1.5 million copies by 1938 and inspiring four movies and a Broadway play. After The Virginian, Wister wrote no more Western novels, though he did publish a collection of some of his early western stories. The great novelist of the American West spent the remainder of his life in the East. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his summer home in Rhode Island in 1938;
1912 – The Senate Commerce Committee issued its report on the Titanic disaster that cited a “state of absolute unpreparedness,” improperly tested safety equipment and an “indifference to danger” as some of the causes of an “unnecessary tragedy”;
1918 – During World War I, in the first sustained American offensive of war, an Allied force including a full brigade of nearly 4,000 United States soldiers captures the village of Cantigny, on the Somme River in France, from their German enemy. Though the United States formally entered World War I on the side of the Allies in April 1917, they were not fully prepared to send significant numbers of troops into battle until a full year had passed. By May 1918, however, large numbers of American soldiers had arrived in France, just in time to face the onslaught of the great German spring offensive. As the first major U.S. victory, the capture of Cantigny had a threefold impact on the war effort in the spring of 1918: first, it deprived the Germans of an important observation point for their troops on the Western Front. It also lent weight to Pershing’s argument that an independent U.S. command should be maintained apart from the joint Allied command. Finally, it provided a warning to the Germans that the Americans, although recently arrived and relatively new to the battlefield, were not a force to be taken lightly;
1923 – As we discuss equal pay for women and ‘the war on women’ today, look where we’ve already come from: The United States Attorney General says it is legal for women to wear trousers anywhere;
1929 – The first all-color talking picture, “On with the Show,” opened in New York;
1937 – Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Great Britain;
1937 – The government of Germany–then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party–forms a new state-owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company.” In 1960, the German government sold 60 percent of Volkswagen’s stock to the public, effectively denationalizing it. Twelve years later, the Beetle surpassed the longstanding worldwide production record of 15 million vehicles, set by Ford Motor Company’s legendary Model T between 1908 and 1927. With the Beetle’s design relatively unchanged since 1935, sales grew sluggish in the early 1970s. VW bounced back with the introduction of sportier models such as the Rabbit and later, the Golf. In 1998, the company began selling the highly touted “New Beetle” while still continuing production of its predecessor. After nearly 70 years and more than 21 million units produced, the last original Beetle rolled off the line in Puebla, Mexico on July 30, 2003;
1940 – In World War II, after 18 days of ceaseless German bombardment, the king of Belgium, having asked for an armistice, is given only unconditional surrender as an option. He takes it. German forces had moved into Belgium on May 10, part of Hitler’s initial western offensive. Despite some support by British forces, the Belgians were simply outnumbered and outgunned from the beginning. The first surrender of Belgium territory took place only one day after the invasion, when the defenders of Fort Eben-Emael surrendered. Disregarding the odds, King Leopold III of Belgium had tried to rally his forces, evoking the Belgian victory during World War I. The Belgian forces fought on, courageously, but were continually overcome by the invaders. King Leopold refused to flee the country and was taken prisoner by the Nazis during their occupation, and confined to his palace. A Belgian underground army grew up during the occupation; its work including protecting the port of Antwerp, the most important provisioning point for Allied troops on the Continent, from destruction by the Germans;
1959 – The U.S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight which both primates survived;
1961 – Amnesty International had its beginnings with the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Observer, “The Forgotten Prisoners”;
1964 – The charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization was issued at the start of a meeting of the Palestine National Congress in Jerusalem;
1965 – Methane gas causes a mine explosion near Dharbad, India, that kills 375 people and injures hundreds more. The blast was so powerful that even workers on the surface of the mine were killed;
1969 – In the Vietnam War, U.S. troops abandon Ap Bia Mountain. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said that the U.S. troops “have completed their search of the mountain and are now continuing their reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the A Shau Valley.” This announcement came amid the public outcry about what had become known as the “Battle of Hamburger Hill.” The battle was part of Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley. The operation began on May 10 when paratroopers from the 101st Airborne engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and U.S. casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and was dubbed “Hamburger Hill” in the U.S. media, a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a “meat grinder.” The purpose of the operation was not to hold territory but rather to keep the North Vietnamese off balance so the decision was made to abandon the mountain shortly after it was captured. The North Vietnamese occupied it a month after it was abandoned;
1977 – 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky;
1984 – President Ronald Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War. However, on June 30, 1988 the remains were identified through DNA as those of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, and were sent to St. Louis for hometown burial;
1986 – The U.S. Court of Appeals upholds the conviction of writer R. Foster Winans for securities fraud. Winans, author of the “Heard on the Street” column for the Wall Street Journal, entered into a scheme with two brokers at Kidder Peabody to give them advance information about his column. The brokers, Kenneth Felis and Peter Brant, made $700,000 by trading stocks that Winans touted in the newspaper; Winans and his lover, David Carpenter, received only $31,000 in kickbacks. Although the amounts of money involved were relatively small, the Winans case became a public symbol of the widespread greed, corruption, and win-at-all-costs mentality of Wall Street that prevailed in the 1980s;
1987 – During the (first) Cold War, Matthias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot from West Germany, takes off from Helsinki, Finland, travels through more than 400 miles of Soviet airspace, and lands his small Cessna aircraft in Red Square by the Kremlin. The event proved to be an immense embarrassment to the Soviet government and military. Rust, described by his mother as a “quiet young man…with a passion for flying,” apparently had no political or social agenda when he took off from the international airport in Helsinki and headed for Moscow. The repercussions in the Soviet Union were immediate. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sacked his minister of defense, and the entire Russian military was humiliated by Rust’s flight into Moscow. U.S. officials had a field day with the event–one American diplomat in the Soviet Union joked, “Maybe we should build a bunch of Cessnas.” Soviet officials were less amused. Four years earlier, the Soviets had been harshly criticized for shooting down a Korean Airlines passenger jet that veered into Russian airspace. Now, the Soviets were laughingstocks for not being able to stop one teenager’s “invasion” of the country. One Russian spokesperson bluntly declared, “You criticize us for shooting down a plane, and now you criticize us for not shooting down a plane”;
1991 – Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, falls to forces of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), formally ending 17 years of Marxist rule in the East African country. In the midst of cease-fire talks, EPRDF tanks entered Addis Ababa virtually unopposed. Soon after, a transition government was formed, with Meles Zenawi as its president. In July, a new democratic constitution was drafted, and Eritrean independence was acknowledged without incident;
1996 – United States President Bill Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud. (While Bill and Hillary both applied their Teflon shields in yet another ‘scandal’);
1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece “The Last Supper” is put back on display;
2004 – The Iraqi Governing Council chose Iyad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become prime minister of Iraq’s interim government;
2009 – A white New York City police officer killed an off-duty black colleague in a friendly fire incident in East Harlem. A grand jury declined to indict Officer Andrew Dunton in the shooting of Officer Omar Edwards, who had drawn his gun and was chasing a man who had broken into his car;
2013 – Calling it perhaps the biggest money-laundering scheme in U.S. history, federal prosecutors charged seven people with running what amounted to an online, underworld bank, saying that Liberty Reserve handled $6 billion for drug dealers, child pornographers, identity thieves and other criminals around the globe;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Number 23 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis, Minnesota
As I
A thought
We are not alone. God has given us each other to live our lives for him and get us back home to him. Along the way, we want to share each others burdens, soar on each others joys, and love each others hurts. There is no such thing as a solo Christian.
Leads to a verse
Be happy with those who are happy and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people and don’t think you know it all!
– Romans 12:15-16
Brings a prayer
Our Loving Father, lead us to the people today who need their burdens lifted and their joys shared. Let us be your presence in the world of your children today. This I ask in Jesus name. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
