Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is Saturday, June 7, the 158th day of 2014 and there are 207 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 hope everyone has a
So, What Happened Today In 1942?
The Naval Battle of Midway ends changing the course of World War II in the Pacific theater
In World War II, the Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive U.S. victories in its war against Japan, comes to an end. In the four-day sea and air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers with the loss of only one of its own, the Yorktown, thus reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy.
In six months of offensives, the Japanese had triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and numerous island groups. The United States however, was a growing threat, and Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto sought to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own. A thousand miles northwest of Honolulu, the strategic island of Midway became the focus of his scheme to smash U.S. resistance to Japan’s imperial designs. Yamamoto’s plan consisted of a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived at Midway to respond to the invasion, it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. If successful, the plan would eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and provide a forward outpost from which the Japanese could eliminate any future American threat in the Central Pacific.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack. Three heavy aircraft carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were mustered to challenge the four heavy Japanese carriers steaming toward Midway. In early June, U.S. command correctly recognized a Japanese movement against Alaska’s Aleutian Islands as a diversionary tactic and kept its forces massed around Midway. On June 3, the Japanese occupation force was spotted steaming toward the island, and B-17 Flying Fortresses were sent out from Midway to bomb the strike force but failed to inflict damage. Early in the morning on June 4, a PBY Catalina flying boat torpedoed a Japanese tanker transport, striking the first blow of the Battle of Midway.
Later that morning, an advance Japanese squadron numbering more than 100 bombers and Zero fighters took off from the Japanese carriers to bomb Midway. Twenty-six Wildcat fighters were sent up to intercept the Japanese force and suffered heavy losses in their heroic defense of Midway’s air base. Soon after, bombers and torpedo planes based on Midway took off to attack the Japanese carriers but failed to inflict serious damage. The first phase of the battle was over by 7:00 a.m.
In the meantime, 200 miles to the northeast, two U.S. attack fleets caught the Japanese force entirely by surprise. Beginning around 9:30 a.m., torpedo bombers from the three U.S. carriers descended on the Japanese carriers. Although nearly wiped out, they drew off enemy fighters, and U.S. dive bombers penetrated, catching the Japanese carriers while their decks were cluttered with aircraft and fuel. The dive-bombers quickly destroyed three of the heavy Japanese carriers and one heavy cruiser. The only Japanese carrier that initially escaped destruction, the Hiryu, loosed all its aircraft against the American task force and managed to seriously damage the U.S. carrier Yorktown, forcing its abandonment. At about 5:00 p.m., dive-bombers from the U.S. carrier Enterprise returned the favor, mortally damaging the Hiryu. It was scuttled the next morning.
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto still had numerous warships at his command, but without his carriers and aircraft he was forced to abandon his Midway invasion plans and begin a westward retreat. On June 5, a U.S. task force pursued his fleet, but bad weather saved it from further destruction. On June 6, the skies cleared, and U.S. aircraft resumed their assault, sinking a cruiser and damaging several other warships. After the planes returned to their carriers, the Americans broke off from the pursuit. Meanwhile, a Japanese submarine torpedoed and fatally wounded the Yorktown, which was in the process of being salvaged. It finally rolled over and sank at dawn on June 7, bringing an end to the battle.
At the Battle of Midway, Japan lost four carriers, a cruiser, and 292 aircraft, and suffered 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft, and suffered 307 casualties. Japan’s losses hobbled its naval might–bringing Japanese and American sea power to approximate parity–and marked the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. In August 1942, the great U.S. counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal and did not cease until Japan’s surrender three years later.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On June 7 In History:
1654 – King Louis XIV, at the age of 15-years-old, was crowned in Rheims, a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, 11 years after the start of his reign;
1692 – A massive earthquake devastates the infamous town of Port Royal in Jamaica, killing thousands. The strong tremors, soil liquefaction and a tsunami brought on by the earthquake combined to destroy the entire town. Port Royal was built on a small island off the coast of Jamaica in the harbor across from present-day Kingston. Many of the buildings where the 6,500 residents lived and worked were constructed right over the water. In the 17th century, Port Royal was known throughout the New World as a headquarters for piracy, smuggling and debauchery. It was described as “most wicked and sinful city in the world” and “one of the lewdest in the Christian world.” Earthquakes in the area were not uncommon, but were usually rather small. After three powerful quakes struck Jamaica, a large tsunami hit putting half of Port Royal under 40 feet of water. The HMS Swan was carried from the harbor and deposited on top of a building on the island. It turned out to be a refuge for survivors. Residents also soon discovered that the island of Port Royal was not made of bedrock. The relatively loosely packed soil turned almost to liquid during the quake. Many buildings literally sank into the ground. In the aftermath, virtually every building in the city was uninhabitable, including two forts. In all, about 3,000 people lost their lives. There was little respite in the aftermath–widespread looting began that evening and thousands more died in the following weeks due to sickness and injury. Aftershocks discouraged the survivors from rebuilding Port Royal. Instead, the city of Kingston was built and remains to this day the largest city in Jamaica;
1769 – Infamous frontiersman and explorer, Daniel Boone, first began to explore present-day Kentucky;
1776 – During the American Revolution, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduces a resolution for independence to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; John Adams seconds the motion. Lee’s resolution declared: “That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.” John Adams wrote that July 2 would be celebrated as “the most memorable epoch in the history of America.” Instead, the day has been largely forgotten in favor of July 4, when Jefferson’s edited Declaration of Independence was adopted;
1863 – In the American Civil War, a Confederate attempt to rescue Vicksburg and a Rebel garrison held back by Union forces to the east of the city fails when Union troops turn back the attack at the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana. By late May 1863, Union General Ulysses S. Grant had surrounded Vicksburg, the last major Confederate possession on the Mississippi River. In one of the more remarkable campaigns of the war, Grant had slipped his army around the city, dove toward the middle of Mississippi, and then bottled up Vicksburg, Mississippi, from the east. He held off one Confederate army while pinning another, commanded by John C. Pemberton, in the city. Grant then laid siege and waited for surrender;
1866 – Thirteen years after American settlers founded the city named for him, Chief Seattle dies in a nearby village of his people. Born sometime around 1790, Seattle (Seathl) was a chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes who lived around the Pacific Coast bay that is today called Puget Sound. He was the son of a Suquamish father and a Duwamish mother, a lineage that allowed him to gain influence in both tribes. By the early 1850s, small bands of Euro-Americans had begun establishing villages along the banks of Puget Sound. Chief Seattle apparently welcomed his new neighbors and seems to have treated them with kindness. In 1853, several settlers moved to a site on Elliott Bay to establish a permanent town–since Chief Seattle had proved so friendly and welcoming, the settlers named their tiny new settlement in his honor. Jesuit missionaries introduced him to Catholicism, and he became a devout believer. He observed morning and evening prayers throughout the rest of his life. The people of the new city of Seattle also paid some respect to the chief’s traditional religion. The Suquamish believed the mention of a dead man’s name disturbs his eternal rest. To provide Chief Seattle with a pre-payment for the difficulties he would face in the afterlife, the people of Seattle levied a small tax on themselves to use the chief’s name. He died in 1866 at the approximate age of 77;
1892 – Homer Plessy, a “Creole of color,” was fined for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Ruling on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, which it overturned in 1954;
1913 – Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, leads the first successful ascent of Mt. McKinley, the highest point on the American continent at 20,320 feet. Stuck, an accomplished amateur mountaineer, was born in London in 1863. After moving to the United States, in 1905 he became archdeacon of the Episcopal Church in Yukon, Alaska where he was an admirer of Native Indian culture and traveled Alaska’s difficult terrain to preach to villagers and establish schools. Mount McKinley National Park was established as a wildlife refuge in 1917. In 1980, the park was expanded and renamed Denali National Park and Preserve. Encompassing 6 million acres, the park is larger than Massachusetts. Hudson Stuck died in Alaska on October 10, 1920. Today, over 1,000 hopeful climbers attempt to scale Mt. McKinley each year, with about half of them successfully reaching their goal;
1917 – During World War I, the British 2nd Army, led by Herbert Plumer, scores a crushing victory over the Germans at Messines Ridge in northern France, marking the successful prelude to an Allied offensive designed to break the grinding stalemate on the Western Front in the war. Although Messines Ridge itself was a relatively limited victory, it had a considerable effect. The Germans were forced to retreat to the east, a sacrifice that marked the beginning of their gradual but continuous loss of territory on the Western Front. It also secured the right flank of the British thrust towards the much-contested Ypres region, the eventual objective of the planned offensive. Over the next month and a half, British forces continued to push the Germans back toward the high ridge at Passchendaele, which on July 31 saw the launch of the British offensive–known as the Battle of Passchendaele or the Third Battle of Ypres–in earnest;
1929 – The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome, Italy;
1939 – King George VI becomes the first British monarch to visit the United States when he and his wife, Elizabeth, cross the Canadian-U.S. border to Niagara Falls, New York. The royal couple subsequently visited New York City and Washington, D.C. where they called for a greater U.S. role in resolving the crisis in Europe. On June 12, they returned to Canada, where they embarked on their voyage home. George, who studied at Dartmouth Naval College and served in World War I, ascended to the throne after his elder brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated on December 11, 1936. During World War II, King George worked to keep up British morale by visiting bombed areas and touring war zones. George and Elizabeth also remained in bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace during the war, shunning the relative safety of the countryside, and George made a series of important morale-boosting radio broadcasts;
1942 – In World War II, Japanese soldiers occupy the American islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska as the Axis power continues to expand its defensive perimeter. Having been defeated at the battle of Midway—stopped by the United States from even landing on the Midway Islands—the Japanese nevertheless proved successful in their invasion of the Aleutians, which had been American territory since purchased from Russia in 1867. Killing 25 American troops upon landing in Attu, the Japanese proceeded to relocate and intern the inhabitants, as well as those at Kiska. America would finally invade and recapture the Aleutians one year later—killing most of the 2,300 Japanese troops defending it—in three weeks of fighting;
1948 – In the early days of the (first) Cold War, Eduard Benes resigns as president of Czechoslovakia rather than sign a new constitution that would make his nation into a communist state. His resignation removed the last remnant of democratic government in Czechoslovakia and cleared the way for a communist-controlled regime. Benes, a popular national figure in Czechoslovakia, had been elected “president for life” in 1946. Almost immediately, however, he faced a challenge from the Communist Party, which pushed for him to adopt a pro-Soviet foreign policy and communist economic practices. Throughout 1946 and 1947, the Communist Party grew in strength, helped by the economic and political turmoil left over from the recently ended war and also by ham-handed U.S. policies that threatened the Benes regime with economic sanctions if it did not purge the communist elements from Czechoslovakia. In the West, Benes’ resignation was accepted as the regrettable but inevitable climax of communist machinations in Czechoslovakia. Both the United States and Great Britain expressed their remorse at the passing of the Benes regime and strongly condemned the tactics of the Communist Party. Beyond military intervention, which was never even considered, there was nothing either nation could do to change the situation. The Communist Party dominated Czechoslovakia until the so-called “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 brought about a restoration of democratic government;
1965 – The Supreme Court of the United States decides on Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples;
1965 – In the Vietnam War, General Westmoreland requests a total of 35 battalions of combat troops, with another nine in reserve. This gave rise to the “44 battalion” debate within the Johnson administration, a discussion of how many U.S. combat troops to commit to the war. Westmoreland felt that the South Vietnamese could not defeat the communists alone and he wanted U.S. combat troops to go on the offensive against the enemy. His plan was to secure the coastlines, block infiltration of North Vietnamese troops into the south, and then wage a war of attrition with “search and destroy” missions into the countryside, using helicopters for rapid deployment and evacuation. Westmoreland had some supporters in the Johnson administration, but others of the president’s advisers did not support Westmoreland’s request for more troops, because they disagreed with what would be a fundamental change in the U.S. role in Vietnam. In the end, Johnson acquiesced to Westmoreland’s request; eventually there would be over 500,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam;
1966 – A former actor named Ronald Reagan receives the Republican nomination for governor of California on this day in 1966. He won the election that November and was sworn in on January 2, 1976. Reagan’s tenure as the Golden State’s governor gave him credibility as a political leader, paving the way for his victory in the 1980 presidential election. Reagan was the first actor to be elected president after two centuries dominated by lawyers and soldiers. He was also the only California governor to hold the office. He served as the 40th president for two terms between 1981 and 1989;
1972 – During the Vietnam War, Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) announces at a news conference that he would go “anywhere in the world” to negotiate an end to the war and a return of U.S. troops and POWs. McGovern, who had swept the Democratic Party spring primaries, was one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policy in Vietnam and he made the war one of the central issues of the campaign. To many American voters, McGovern’s call for an immediate end to the war was tantamount to unconditional surrender. Incumbent Richard Nixon, who had campaigned on pursuing “peace with honor” in Vietnam decisively defeated McGovern when it became known that his envoy, Henry Kissinger, was close to negotiating a settlement with the North Vietnamese in peace talks;
1975 – “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” by John Denver hits #1. You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yl6A30A-L0;
1981 – In ‘Operation Opera’, also referred to as ‘Operation Babylon’, Israeli F-16 fighter bombers destroy a nuclear power plant in Iraq, a facility the Israelis charged could have been used to make nuclear weapons;
1989 – For one full second in the morning, the time is 01:23:45, 6-7-89;
1998 – In a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas by three white men, Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer and John William King. Two were later sentenced to death; one of them, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed in 2011. The third defendant received life with the possibility of parole;
2002 – 41-year-old Michael Skakel is convicted in the 1975 murder of his former Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbor, 15-year-old neighbor Martha Moxley. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, was later sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. On October 30, 1975, Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a golf club outside her family’s home in Greenwich, one of America’s most affluent communities. The golf club was later determined to have come from a set belonging to the Skakel family, who lived across the street from the Moxleys. Skakel’s cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr., an attorney, later worked to get Skakel a new trial; however, in 2010, the request was denied by the Connecticut Supreme Court. In October 2013, in yet another twist to the case, a Connecticut judge ordered a new trial for Skakel, ruling that his first trial lawyer didn’t represent him effectively. The following month, Skakel was released from prison on a $1.2 million bond;
2004 – A steady, near-silent stream of people circled through the rotunda of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, where the body of the nation’s 40th president lay in repose before traveling to Washington two days later for a state funeral;
2013 – President Barack Obama vigorously defended the government’s just-disclosed collection of massive amounts of information from phone and Internet records as a necessary defense against terrorism, and assured Americans, “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.” (Well, maybe just a ‘smidgen’, but DUDE, that was a year ago!!!);
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Another reason I still enjoy reading the newspaper!
Number 32 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Central Park, New York City, New York
As I
A thought
So many things about our life are uncertain. One thing, however, is sure: no matter where, when, or how long, God will be there and will be with us and for us.
Leads to a verse
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
– Psalm 90:2 & 4
Brings a prayer
Everlasting Father, I find great comfort in knowing that I cannot be in a place or time where you are not. Stir my courage through your Spirit that I may be more bold, by your power and presence, to share the Gospel of Jesus. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
