Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 31, the 151st day of 2014 and there are 214 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 apologize for the post to be so late today my friends…had a couple of very important breaking news stories to get out and needed a lot of time for verification prior to putting them out. You can read them here if you like:
POW Sgt Bowe BERGDAHL is coming home! – https://fggam.org/breaking-news-pow-sgt-bowe-berghdal-coming-home/
AND
Christian Women sentenced to death in Sudan may be released soon! – https://fggam.org/khartoum-official-tells-bbc-christian-woman-death-sentence-sudan-will-released/
So, What Happened Today In 1962?
Architect of the Holocaust is hanged in Israel
Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity.
Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. In November 1932, he joined the Nazi’s elite SS (Schutzstaffel) organization, whose members came to have broad responsibilities in Nazi Germany, including policing, intelligence, and the enforcement of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. Eichmann steadily rose in the SS hierarchy, and with the German annexation of Austria in 1938 he was sent to Vienna with the mission of ridding the city of Jews. He set up an efficient Jewish deportment center and in 1939 was sent to Prague on a similar mission. That year, Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish section of the SS central security office in Berlin.
In January 1942, Eichmann met with top Nazi officials at the Wansee Conference near Berlin for the purpose of planning a “final solution of the Jewish question,” as Nazi leader Hermann Goering put it. The Nazis decided to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population. Eichmann was appointed to coordinate the identification, assembly, and transportation of millions of Jews from occupied Europe to the Nazi death camps, where Jews were gassed or worked to death. He carried this duty out with horrifying efficiency, and between three to four million Jews perished in the extermination camps before the end of World War II. Close to two million were executed elsewhere.
Following the war, Eichmann was captured by U.S. troops, but he escaped a prison camp in 1946 before having to face the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal. Eichmann traveled under an assumed identity between Europe and the Middle East, and in 1950 he arrived in Argentina, which maintained lax immigration policies and was a safe haven for many Nazi war criminals. In 1957, a German prosecutor secretly informed Israel that Eichmann was living in Argentina. Agents from Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, were deployed to Argentina, and in early 1960 they finally located Eichmann; he was living in the San Fernando section of Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Klement.
In May 1960, Argentina was celebrating the 150th anniversary of its revolution against Spain, and many tourists were traveling to Argentina from abroad to attend the festivities. The Mossad used the opportunity to smuggle more agents into the country. Israel, knowing that Argentina might never extradite Eichmann for trial, had decided to abduct him and take him to Israel illegally. On May 11, Mossad operatives descended on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando and snatched Eichmann away as he was walking from the bus to his home. His family called local hospitals but not the police, and Argentina knew nothing of the operation. On May 20, a drugged Eichmann was flown out of Argentina disguised as an Israeli airline worker who had suffered head trauma in an accident. Three days later, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Eichmann was in Israeli custody.
Argentina demanded Eichmann’s return, but Israel argued that his status as an international war criminal gave them the right to proceed with a trial. On April 11, 1961, Eichmann’s trial began in Jerusalem. It was the first televised trial in history. Eichmann faced 15 charges, including crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and war crimes. He claimed he was just following orders, but the judges disagreed, finding him guilty on all counts on December 15 and sentencing him to die. On May 31, 1962, he was hanged near Tel Aviv. His body was cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 31 In History:
1279 BC – Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt;
1223 – In the Mongol invasion of the Cumans at the Battle of the Kalka River – Mongol armies of Genghis Khan lead by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans;
1678 – Lady Godiva rode naked through Coventry England in a protest of taxes;
1775 – During the American Revolution, the committeemen of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina meet and respond to news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the Revolutionary War, with a series of 20 patriotic resolutions. This meeting gave rise to a lasting historical myth better known than the event itself. In 1819, the Raleigh Register published a document that it claimed was the Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence from May 20, 1775. Controversy continues regarding the declaration’s authenticity, but it is likely that the so-called declaration was a misdated and edited version of the resolves that were actually recorded on May 31. The myth of the May 20, 1775, declaration is deeply entrenched: North Carolina’s state seal and flag bear the dates May 20, 1775, and April 12, 1776. April 12, 1776, was the date of the Halifax Resolves, with which the North Carolina Provincial Congress empowered its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote in favor of independence from Britain. Despite the continued popularity of the Mecklenburg Declaration in popular lore, the less emphatic set of 20 resolves issued on May 31, which suspended crown authority in North Carolina without overtly declaring independence, are the only ones confirmed to have existed by contemporary documents;
1790 – United States President George Washington signed the first U.S. copyright act into law;
1859 – The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high St. Stephen’s Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859. After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster–the headquarters of the British Parliament–in October 1834, a standout feature of the design for the new palace was a large clock atop a tower. The royal astronomer, Sir George Airy, wanted the clock to have pinpoint accuracy, including twice-a-day checks with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. While many clockmakers dismissed this goal as impossible, Airy counted on the help of Edmund Beckett Denison, a formidable barrister known for his expertise in horology, or the science of measuring time. Even after an incendiary bomb destroyed the chamber of the House of Commons during the Second World War, St. Stephen’s Tower survived, and Big Ben continued to function. Its famously accurate timekeeping is regulated by a stack of coins placed on the clock’s huge pendulum, ensuring a steady movement of the clock hands at all times. At night, all four of the clock’s faces, each one 23 feet across, are illuminated. A light above Big Ben is also lit to let the public know when Parliament is in session;
1862 – During the American Civil War, as part of the Peninsula campaign, Confederate forces strike Union troops at the Battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks) in Virginia. During May 1862, the Army of the Potomac, under the command of George B. McClellan, slowly advanced up the James Peninsula after sailing down the Chesapeake Bay by boat. Confederate commander Joseph Johnston had been cautiously backing his troops up the peninsula in the face of the larger Union force, giving ground until he was in the Richmond perimeter. Johnston attacked one of McClellan’s corps south of the river on May 31 in a promising assault. The plan called for three divisions to hammer the Federal corps from three sides, but the inexperienced Confederates were delayed and confused. By the time the attack came, McClellan had time to muster reinforcements and drive the Rebels back. A Confederate attack the next day also produced no tangible results. The Yankees lost 5,000 casualties to the Rebels’ 6,000. The battle had two important consequences. McClellan was horrified by the sight of his dead and wounded soldiers, and became much more cautious and timid in battle, actions that would eventually doom the campaign. And since Johnston was wounded during the battle’s first day, Robert E. Lee replaced him. The history of the war in the eastern theater drastically changed as Lee ascended the ranks. His leadership and exploits soon became legend;
1879 – New York’s Madison Square Garden, named after the 4th President or the United States, James Madison, opens its doors for the first time;
1884 – Dr John Harvey Kellogg patents “flaked cereal”;
1887 – Reflecting a scientific spirit that was rare among frontier physicians, Tombstone doctor George Goodfellow rushes south to investigate an earthquake in Mexico. Though keenly interested in earthquakes, Goodfellow is best remembered today for being one of the nation’s leading experts on the treatment of gunshot wounds, a condition he had many opportunities to study in the wild mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. After 12 years in Tombstone, Goodfellow returned to California and became a leading physician in San Francisco. For those 12 years, though, Tombstone—today best known for its gunslingers, gamblers, and desperados—had one of the most scientifically advanced doctors in the West. Goodfellow died in Los Angeles in 1910 at the age of 64;
1889 – The South Fork Dam collapses causing a flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that kills more than 2,200 people. Johnstown is 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh, and Stony Creek Rivers. It is located on a floodplain that has been subject to frequent disasters. Because of the area’s susceptibility to floods, a dam was built in 1840 on the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles upstream from Johnstown. Nine hundred feet by 72 feet, it was the largest earth dam (made of dirt and rock, rather than steel and concrete) in the United States and it created the largest man-made lake of the time, Lake Conemaugh. People in the path of the rushing flood waters were often crushed as their homes and other structures were swept away. Thirty-three train engines were pulled into the raging waters, creating more hazards. Some people in Johnstown were able to make it to the top floors of the few tall buildings in town. However, whirlpools brought down many of these taller buildings. A bridge downstream from the town caught much of the debris and then proceeded to catch fire. Some people who had survived by floating on top of debris were burned to death in the fire. Reportedly, one baby survived on the floor of a house as it floated 75 miles from Johnstown. One of the American Red Cross’s first major relief efforts took place in the aftermath of the Johnstown flood. Clara Barton arrived five days later to lead the relief. It took five years to rebuild Johnstown;
1902 – In Pretoria, representatives of Great Britain and the Boer states sign the Treaty of Vereeniging, officially ending the three-and-a-half-year South African Boer War. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape colony in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, sparking resistance from the independence-minded Boers, who resented the Anglicization of South Africa and Britain’s anti-slavery policies. The British had crushed the Boer resistance, and on May 31 of that year, the Peace of Vereeniging was signed, ending hostilities. The treaty recognized the British military administration over Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and authorized a general amnesty for Boer forces. In 1910, the autonomous Union of South Africa was established by the British. It included Transvaal, the Orange Free State, the Cape of Good Hope, and Natal as provinces;
1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) holds its first conference. (Isn’t a name change overdue – ‘colored people’??);
1913 – United States Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan proclaimed the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular election of U.S. senators, to be in effect;
1916 – In World War II, just before four o’clock on the afternoon, a British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish coast. The two squadrons opened fire on each other simultaneously, beginning the opening phase of the greatest naval battle of the war, the Battle of Jutland. Despite missed opportunities and heavy losses, the Battle of Jutland had left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact. The German High Seas Fleet would make no further attempts to break the Allied blockade or to engage the Grand Fleet for the remainder of World War I;
1929 – After two years of exploratory visits and friendly negotiations, Ford Motor Company signs a landmark agreement to produce cars in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, which in 1928 had only 20,000 cars and a single truck factory, was eager to join the ranks of automotive production, and Ford, with its focus on engineering and manufacturing methods, was a natural choice to help. The always independent-minded Henry Ford was strongly in favor of his free-market company doing business with Communist countries. An article published in May 1929 in The New York Times quoted Ford as saying that “No matter where industry prospers, whether in India or China, or Russia, all the world is bound to catch some good from it.” Signed in Dearborn, Michigan, the contract stipulated that Ford would oversee construction of a production plant at Nizhni Novgorod, located on the banks of the Volga River, to manufacture Model A cars. An assembly plant would also start operating immediately within Moscow city limits. In return, the USSR agreed to buy 72,000 unassembled Ford cars and trucks and all spare parts to be required over the following nine years, a total of some $30 million worth of Ford products;
1935 – Movie studio 20th Century Fox was created through a merger of the Fox Film Corp. and Twentieth Century Pictures;
1949 – Former State Department official and accused spy Alger Hiss went on trial in New York, charged with perjury. The jury deadlocked, but Hiss was convicted in a second trial;
1955 – The Supreme Court orders that states must end racial segregation “with all deliberate speed”;
1961 – South Africa became an independent republic as it withdrew from the British Commonwealth;
1965 – In the Vietnam War, U.S. planes bomb an ammunition depot at Hoi Jan, west of Hanoi, and try again to drop the Than Hoa highway bridge. These raids were part of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had begun in March 1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered the sustained bombing of North Vietnam to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam. In July 1966, Rolling Thunder was expanded to include North Vietnamese ammunition dumps and oil storage facilities as targets. In the spring of 1967, it was further expanded to include power plants, factories, and airfields in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. From 1965 to 1968, about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. A total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder. The operation continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson halted it on October 31, 1968, under increasing domestic political pressure;
1977 – The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making, was completed. (Just a tad faster than getting the KeyStone Pipeline approved!);
1988 – During the (first) Cold War, President Ronald Reagan ends his first trip to Moscow, and his fourth summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on notes of both frustration and triumph. Although there were no breakthroughs or agreements on substantive issues, the “Great Communicator,” as Reagan was known in the United States, was a hit with Soviet audiences. The May 1988 summit between Gorbachev and Reagan was billed as a celebratory follow-up to their breakthrough summit of October 1987. At that meeting in Washington, D.C., the two leaders had signed the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles from Europe. The May meeting, however, got off to a rocky start as Reagan lectured Gorbachev about the need to improve the Soviet Union’s human rights record. From that inauspicious start, the summit went downhill and ended with no further progress on arms control. The May 1988 summit meeting was a victory of style over substance. Both Reagan and Gorbachev kept up positive fronts in their public statements, but in fact, the meeting had been a great disappointment for both sides. No further progress on arms limitation was made, and Reagan’s efforts to push the human rights issue met a frosty response from Gorbachev. The summit indicated that despite the progress made in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in the past years, serious differences still existed;
1989 – House Speaker Jim Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign. Tom Foley later succeeded him. (Maybe something I’m thinking should be happening in the Senate today!!!);
1994 – The United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union;
1996 – In what was regarded as a setback for the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, became prime minister in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist. Netanyahu, who promised to be tough on terrorism and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was at 47 the youngest prime minister elected in the country’s history;
2004 – Alberta Martin, one of the last widows of a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, died in Enterprise, Alabama, at age 97. She was born as Alberta Stewart to sharecroppers in Danleys Crossroads, Alabama south of Montgomery. At 18, she met a cabdriver named Howard Farrow who later died in a car accident in 1926. After moving to Opp, Alabama, she met widowere William Jasper Martin, born in 1845 and a veteran of the 4th Alabama infantry, a Confederate unit during the Civil War and on December 19, 1927, the then 21-year-old Stewart married the 81-year-old Martin primarily to get help raising her son and because his $50 a month Confederate pension check guaranteed her a degree of financial security;
2005 – W. Mark Felt’s family ends 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. The Felt family’s admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had promised to keep their source’s identity a secret until his death, by surprise. Tapes show that Nixon himself had speculated that Felt was the secret informant as early as 1973. The question “Who was Deep Throat?” had been investigated relentlessly in the ensuing years since Watergate in movies, books, televisions shows, and on the Internet. America was obsessed with the shadowy figure who went to great lengths to conceal his involvement with the Washington Post reporters. In the aftermath of Felt’s admission, both Woodward and Bernstein expressed worries that, due to the intense interest in the Deep Throat mystery over the years, Felt’s role in unraveling the complicated web of lies and deceit that was Watergate may be overstated. They reminded Americans that other sources, Nixon’s secret White House tape recordings, the Senate’s Watergate hearings, and the historic action of the U.S. Supreme Court all played an important role in bringing the truth to light. In 1973, the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize in public service for its coverage of the Watergate scandal. W. Mark Felt died on December 18, 2008, at the age of 95;
2009 – Millvina Dean, the last remaining survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Southampton, England at 97;
2013 – A tornado in the Oklahoma City metro area claimed eight lives, including those of storm chasers Tim Samaras, his son, Paul, and Carl Young; 13 people died in flash flooding;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!
Number 26 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Glacier National Park, Montana
As I
A thought
What do you have that is forever? Most of everything we have falls apart, breaks, or runs down in a short time. But we have three things that last forever: God, our Christian friends, and our praise of God. These are eternal.
Leads to a verse
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. Then together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meed the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18
That brings a prayer
Father God, I look forward to the day of your next great surprise. I join the angels in standing on tiptoe as I look to the clouds to see my Lord and your Son return in glory and receive the welcome and honor he deserves. I praise you for that day now, even though I only see it by faith. Until I see you on that day, please know my heart’s desire is to serve you, even when my weakness gets in my way of showing it as fully as I should. I offer you my sincerest thanks and praise in Jesus’ name. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
