Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is Wednesday, June 4, the 155th day of 2014 and there are 210 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 !!!
Welcome to:
Just an IDEA!! –
Obama announced a new 600-page proposal to lower carbon emissions and help stop global warming. Step one: Stop printing 600-page proposals!
So, What Happened Today In 1942?
The World War II Battle of Midway begins
In World War II, the Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during the war, begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.
In six months of offensives prior to Midway, 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. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack.
In the meantime, 200 miles to the northeast, two U.S. attack fleets caught the Japanese force entirely by surprise and destroyed three 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.
When the Battle of Midway ended, Japan had lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 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.
The following picture is the USS Midway (CVA-41) named after this famous battle; (My first ship in my Navy career was the Midway’s sister ship, USS Coral Sea (CVA-43) while both ships were performing combat duties in the Vietnam War):
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On June 4 In History:
1070 – Roqueford cheese is accidentally discovered in a cave near Roqueford, France, when a sheperd finds a lunch he had forgotten several days before;
1391 – A mob led by Ferrand Martinez surounds and sets fire to the Jewish quarter of Seville Spain, surviving Jews were subsequently sold into slavery;
1647 – English Parliamentary army under Cornet George Joyce takes King Charles I as a prisoner during Second Civil War;
1717 – The Freemasons are founded in London, England;
1754 – During the Seven Years’ War, a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia named George Washington begins construction of a makeshift Fort Necessity. The fort was built to defend his forces from French soldiers enraged by the murder of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville while in Washington’s custody. One month later, the French, led by Jumonville’s half-brother, won Washington’s surrender and forced confession to Jumonville’s murder. The Ohio Valley had long been a contested territory among French Canadians, various Indian groups and the British colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia. When the French began to establish fortifications along the river and refused Virginia’s written demand that they depart, Virginia’s governor, Robert Dinwiddie, dispatched Washington to complete and defend a Virginian fort at the forks of the Ohio. Upon their arrival, Washington discovered that a scouting party led by Jumonville was nearby. Fearing that the French were planning an attack, Washington struck first, successfully ambushing the small party. In one of history’s murkier moments, Jumonville was murdered by Washington’s Indian ally, Tanaghrisson, while the monolingual Washington struggled to interrogate the French-speaking Canadian. Jumonville’s murder in captivity incited a strong French response, and Washington was unable to defend his makeshift Fort Necessity from French forces led by Jumonville’s half-brother. Washington surrendered on July 4 and signed a confession—in French, which he could not read—to Jumonville’s assassination;
1783 – The Montgolfier brothers first publicly demonstrated their hot-air balloon, which did not carry any passengers, over Annonay, France;
1862 – In the American Civil War, Confederate forces slip out of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, a key stronghold on the Mississippi River, clearing the way for the Union capture of Memphis. Fort Pillow lay south of Island No. 10, the Confederates’ key defense from a Northern assault. Although considered a backup to Island No. 10, Fort Pillow was really a significant fortification in its own right. After a Union campaign captured the island in early April, Fort Pillow was all that stood between the Yankees and Memphis. By mid-April, a combined Union land force and naval squadron approached Fort Pillow. Most of the land force, however, had to be diverted to serve in northern Mississippi, so only 1,200 troops remained. Although the land force was too small to take the fort, Yankee ships began a weeks-long bombardment. On May 25, an additional flotilla arrived to step up the pressure on the Confederate bastion. Events in northern Mississippi sealed the fate of Fort Pillow. The Confederates evacuated Corinth on June 4 and fell back to a more defensible position in central Mississippi, leaving Fort Pillow dangerously isolated in Union-held territory, with no support from the southeast. On June 4, the Rebel garrison slipped away from the fort, destroying what cannons and provisions they could not carry with them. That set the stage for the capture of Memphis on June 6;
1876 – In the American ‘Old West’, a mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco. That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from “sea to shining sea,” it took the president 10 days to travel the 225 miles from Monticello to Philadelphia via carriage. Even with frequent changing of horses, the 100-mile journey from New York to Philadelphia demanded two days hard travel in a light stagecoach. At such speeds, the coasts of the continent-wide American nation were months apart. How could such a vast country ever hope to remain united? As early as 1802, Jefferson had some glimmer of an answer. “The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam,” he predicted, “[to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.” Though Jefferson never saw a train in his lifetime, he had glimpsed the future with the idea. Within half a century, America would have more railroads than any other nation in the world. By 1869, the first transcontinental line linking the coasts was completed. Suddenly, a journey that had previously taken months using horses could be made in less than a week. The powerful agent of steam had effectively shrunk a vast nation to a manageable size;
1892 – The Sierra Club was incorporated in San Francisco;
1896 – At approximately 4:00 a.m., in the shed behind his home on Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Henry Ford unveils the “Quadricycle,” the first automobile he ever designed or drove. When Ford and James Bishop, his chief assistant, attempted to wheel the Quadricycle out of the shed, however, they discovered that it was too wide to fit through the door. To solve the problem, Ford took an axe to the brick wall of the shed, smashing it to make space for the vehicle to be rolled out. With Bishop bicycling ahead to alert passing carriages and pedestrians, Ford drove the 500-pound Quadricycle down Detroit’s Grand River Avenue, circling around three major thoroughfares. The Quadricycle had two driving speeds, no reverse, no brakes, rudimentary steering ability and a doorbell button as a horn, and it could reach about 20 miles per hour. Aside from one breakdown on Washington Boulevard due to a faulty spring, the drive was a success, and Ford was on his way to becoming one of the most formidable success stories in American business history;
1911 – Gold is discovered in Alaska’s Indian Creek;
1916 – In World War I, the Battle of Lutsk marks the beginning of the Brusilov Offensive, the largest and most successful Allied offensive of the war;
1919 – The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized female suffrage. In 1913, the National Woman’s party organized the voting power of these enfranchised women to elect congressional representatives who supported woman suffrage, and by 1916 both the Democratic and Republican parties openly endorsed female enfranchisement. In 1919, the 19th Amendment, which stated that “the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land. Eight days later, the 19th Amendment took effect;
1934 – President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to appropriate $52.5 million to battle economic and social disaster in the American Midwest caused in part by a series of droughts in the Great Plains region. A series of great droughts that began in the 1920s and a history of poor land-management practices had created a ‘Dust Bowl’ in the Great Plains by the 1930s, exacerbating the already difficult economic conditions of the Great Depression for hundreds of thousands of Americans. For days at a time, as an Oklahoma observer wrote, thick clouds of dust blotted out the sun. As water ran out and crops dried up, farmers migrated to other parts of the nation to find jobs. By 1938, when the drought had abated and normal rainfall levels returned, over $1 billion in federal aid had been appropriated for the Great Plans region. Out of Roosevelt’s drought-relief program grew soil conservation districts that remain in place today and have helped to prevent the emergence of drought conditions as devastating as the ones of the 1930s;
1940 – In World War II, the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk on the Belgian coast ends as German forces capture the beach port. The nine-day evacuation, the largest of its kind in history and an unexpected success, saved 338,000 Allied troops from capture by the Nazis. With Western Europe abandoned by its main defenders, the German army swept through the rest of France, and Paris fell on June 14. Eight days later, Henri Petain signed an armistice with the Nazis at Compiegne. Germany annexed half the country, leaving the other half in the hands of their puppet French rulers. On June 6, 1944, liberation of Western Europe finally began with the successful Allied landing at Normandy;
1944 – During World War II, U-505, a German submarine, was captured by a United States Navy task group in the south Atlantic; it was the first such capture of an enemy vessel at sea by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812;
1953 – In the Korean War, North Korea accepts the United Nations proposals in all major respects;
1961 – During the Vietnam War, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, meeting in Vienna, strike a bargain to support a neutral and independent Laos. Laos had been the scene of an ongoing communist insurgency by the Pathet Lao guerrillas. In July 1959, the North Vietnamese Politburo had formed Group 959 to furnish weapons and supplies to the Pathet Lao. By 1960, the Pathet Lao was threatening the survival of the Royal Lao government. On January 19, 1961, when President Eisenhower was about to leave office, he told Kennedy that Laos “was the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia.” Kennedy considered intervening in Laos with U.S. combat troops, but decided against it. Nevertheless, the American president did not want to lose Laos to the communists. Kennedy was prepared to accept neutrality for Laos as a solution. Eventually a 14-nation conference would convene in Geneva and an agreement was signed in July 1962, proclaiming Laos neutral. This took care of the situation in Laos for the time being, but both the communists and the United States soon ignored the declared neutrality of the area;
1972 – A collision of two trains in Jessore, Bangladesh, kills 76 people and nearly 500 people were seriously injured. This disaster resulted from one simple error by a train-station operator. An express train loaded far beyond capacity, left the southern port city of Khulna heading north. It was passing through Jessore at full speed when the stationmaster threw the wrong switch. With no other safeguards in place to protect it, the train was sent on local tracks straight into a train standing at the station;
1984 – Bruce Springsteen releases “Born in the USA”. You can watch and listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Hpo39FivM;
1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top-secret U.S. military intelligence information to Israel. Pollard was arrested in November 1985 after authorities learned that he had been meeting with Israeli agents every two weeks for the last year. He was paid approximately $50,000 for the highly sensitive documents and expected to receive as much as $300,000 in a secret Swiss bank account. The top-secret information included satellite photos and data on Soviet weapons. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison while his wife Anne received a five-year sentence for being an accessory to the crimes. The discovery of his betrayal put a chill on the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Viewing the U.S. as its ally, Israel believed that the information should have been passed along anyway. But the fact that some Israeli agents remained in high positions despite their involvement in the espionage angered the United States. Israel has since stuck by Pollard. During peace negotiations mediated by President Clinton in the late 1990s, the nation made Pollard’s release from prison a key point. Though Israel continues to work toward Pollard’s release, the United States has declined to work out such a deal;
1989 – As authorized the day before, Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, killing and arresting thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The brutal Chinese government assault on the protesters shocked the West and brought denunciations and sanctions from the United States. The savagery of the Chinese government’s attack shocked both its allies and Cold War enemies. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that he was saddened by the events in China. He said he hoped that the government would adopt his own domestic reform program and begin to democratize the Chinese political system. In the United States, editorialists and members of Congress denounced the Tiananmen Square massacre and pressed for President George Bush to punish the Chinese government. A little more than three weeks later, the U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against the People’s Republic of China in response to the brutal violation of human rights;
2004 – Muffler shop owner Marvin Heemeyer, angry after losing a zoning dispute, went on a rampage in Granby, Colorado, using a customized armor-plated bulldozer to knock down or damage nine buildings before shooting himself to death;
2009 – Speaking at Cairo University, President Barack Obama called for a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims” and said together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe;
2013 – Already heavily criticized for targeting conservative groups, the Internal Revenue Service suffered another blow as new details emerged in a report about senior officials enjoying luxury hotel rooms, free drinks and food at a $4.1 million training conference;
2013 – Ohio State University President Gordon Gee announced his retirement after he came under fire for joking about “those damn Catholics” at Notre Dame and poking fun at the academic quality of other schools;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Another reason I still enjoy reading the newspaper!!!
Number 30 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Silver Spray Falls, Walpack Township, Sussex County, New Jersey
As I close today, I
And a thought
This is just another way of saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself!” Jesus came to bear our burdens and carry away the stain and pain of our sin. He now asks us to live redemptively, in practical ways, toward those around us. More than just praying, or asking what we can do to help, we are called to serve, minister, and assist others who are burdened.
Leads to a verse
Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.
– Galatians 6:2
That brings about a prayer
Holy and merciful God, please give me eyes to see, a heart willing to serve, and hands ready to help the people in my path that need a burden lifted. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
