Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is February 21, the 52nd day of 2014 and there are 313 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 !!!
Our Pastor Dewey is off to the Vet again today with his precious four-legged loved ones. Both his wonderful dogs have recently been inflicted with cancer and he loves them dearly. A special prayer for our Pastor, his wife and their precious babies today please:
God of the universe, be present with these your creatures. Bless Buffy and Reno and Pastor Dewey and his wonderful wife Sharon who cares for them both so very much, now and for ever always. Amen
So, What Happened Today In 1862 ?
Northern & Southern States clash at the Battle of Valverde, New Mexico
In the American Civil War, at the Battle of Valverde, New Mexico, Confederate troops under General Henry Hopkins Sibley attack Union troops commanded by Colonel Edward R. S. Canby near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory. The first major engagement of the Civil War in the far West, the battle produced heavy casualties but no decisive result.
This action was part of the broader movement by the Confederates to capture New Mexico and other parts of the West, and thereby secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Furthermore, the cash-strapped Confederacy could use Western mines to fill its treasury. From San Antonio, the Rebels moved into southern New Mexico (which included Arizona) and captured the towns of Mesilla and Tucson. Sibley, with 3,000 troops, now moved north against the Federal stronghold at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande.
At Fort Craig, Canby was determined to make the Confederates lay siege to the post. The Rebels, Canby reasoned, could not wait long before running low on supplies. He knew that Sibley did not possess sufficiently heavy artillery to attack the fort. When Sibley arrived near Fort Craig on February 15, he ordered his men to swing east of the fort, cross the Rio Grande, and capture the Valverde fords of the Rio Grande. He hoped to cut off Canby’s communication and force the Yankees out into the open.
At the fords, five miles north of Fort Craig, a Union detachment attacked part of the Confederate force. They pinned the Texans in a ravine and were on the verge of routing the Rebels when more of Sibley’s men arrived and turned the tide. Sibley’s second in command, Colonel Tom Green, filling in for an ill Sibley, made a bold counterattack against the Union left flank. The Yankees fell back in retreat, and headed back to Fort Craig.
The Union suffered 68 killed, 160 wounded, and 35 missing out of 3,100 engaged. The Confederates suffered 31 killed, 154 wounded, and 1 missing out of 2,600 troops. It was a bloody but indecisive battle. Sibley’s men continued up the Rio Grande. Within a few weeks, they captured Albuquerque and Santa Fe before they were stopped at the Battle of Glorieta Pass on March 28.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On February 21 In History:
1613 – Mikhail Romanov, 16, was unanimously chosen by Russia’s national assembly to be czar, beginning a dynasty that would last three centuries;
1828 – The first printing press designed to use the newly invented Cherokee alphabet arrives at New Echota, Georgia. The General Council of the Cherokee Nation had purchased the press with the goal of producing a Cherokee-language newspaper;
1842 – 1st known sewing machine patented in U.S., John Greenough, Washington D.C.;
1848 – Just as he stands up from his desk in the House of Representatives to defend his no vote on a bill, former President John Quincy Adams suddenly collapses from a cerebral hemorrhage. House members carried him to a bed in the Speaker of the House’s private chambers and immediately summoned his wife Louisa. By the time she arrived, he was not able to recognize her. His last words supposedly were, This is the end of earth, but I am content. Adams had suffered and survived a previous stroke in 1846. Two days after collapsing from the second stroke in 1848, he died in a bed in the Capitol building in which he had performed so many years of public service;
1848 – The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet, arguably the most influential in history, proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever. Originally published in German as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (“Manifesto of the Communist Party”), the work had little immediate impact. Its ideas, however, reverberated with increasing force into the 20th century, and by 1950 nearly half the world’s population lived under Marxist governments;
1862 – Nathaniel Gordon became the first and only American slave-trader to be executed under the U.S. Piracy Law of 1820 as he was hanged in New York;
1878 – The world’s first telephone book is issued by the New Haven Connecticut Telephone Company containing the names of its 50 subscribers;
1885 – The Washington Monument, built-in honor of America’s revolutionary hero and first president, is dedicated in Washington, D.C. Three years later it was opened to the public, who were permitted to climb to the top of the monument by stairs or elevator. The monument was the tallest structure in the world when completed and remains today, by District of Columbia law, the tallest building in the nation’s capital;
1887 – Oregon becomes the first state to make Labor Day a holiday;
1916 – During World War I, at 7:12 a.m. in the morning, a shot from a German Krupp 38-centimeter long-barreled gun, one of over 1,200 such weapons set to bombard French forces along a 20-kilometer front stretching across the Meuse River—strikes a cathedral in Verdun, France, beginning the Battle of Verdun, which would stretch on for 10 months and become the longest conflict of the war;
1918 – In World War I, combined Allied forces of British troops and the Australian mounted cavalry capture the city of Jericho in Palestine after a three-day battle with Turkish troops. The capture of Jericho proved to be an important strategic victory for the Allies, who now controlled some of the most important roads in the region, including the main road to the coast and the mountain highway leading to Jerusalem, and had reached the northern end of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth at 1,290 feet below sea level;
1922 – Great Britain grants Egypt its independence;
1931 – Alka Seltzer is introduced;
1940 – The Germans begin construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz;
1944 – During World War II, Hideki Tojo, prime minister of Japan, grabs even more power as he takes over as army chief of staff, a position that gives him direct control of the Japanese military. Upon Japan’s surrender, Tojo tried to commit suicide by shooting himself with an American .38 pistol but he was saved by an American physician who gave him a blood transfusion. He was convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal and was hanged on December 22, 1948;
1945 – During the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was sunk by kamikazes with the loss of 318 men;
1947 – Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds;
1948 – The National Association for Stock Car Racing–or NASCAR, as it will come to be widely known–is officially incorporated. NASCAR racing will go on to become one of America’s most popular spectator sports, as well as a multi-billion-dollar industry. Today, NASCAR has three national series as well as four regional series and two international series. The organization sanctions over 1,200 races at 100 tracks across North America;
1951 – The U. S. Eighth Army launches Operation Killer, a counterattack to push Chinese forces north of the Han River in Korea;
1960 – Havana places all Cuban industry under direct control of the government;
1965 – In New York City, one week after his home was firebombed, Malcolm X, an African-American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights;
1970 – During the Vietnam War, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger begins secret peace talks with North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho, the fifth-ranking member of the Hanoi Politburo, at a villa outside Paris;
1971 – The Mississippi River Delta is pounded by powerful tornadoes that kill more than 100 people. The storm that caused the twisters moved up from the bayous of Louisiana through Mississippi to Tennessee. Hundreds of people were injured across the three states;
1972 – During the Cold War, in an amazing turn of events, President Richard Nixon takes a dramatic first step toward normalizing relations with the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks. Nixon’s historic visit began the slow process of the re-establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China. Still mired in the unpopular and frustrating Vietnam War in 1971, Nixon surprised the American people by announcing a planned trip to the PRC in 1972. The United States had never stopped formally recognizing the PRC after Mao Zedong’s successful communist revolution of 1949. In fact, the two nations had been bitter enemies. PRC and U.S. troops fought in Korea during the early 1950s, and Chinese aid and advisors supported North Vietnam in its war against the United States;
1994 – CIA operative Aldrich Ames is arrested for selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames had access to the names and identities of all U.S. spies in Russia, and by becoming a double agent he was directly responsible for jeopardizing the lives of CIA agents working in the Eastern bloc. At least 10 men were killed after Ames revealed their identities, and more were sent to Russian gulags. Maria del Rosario Casas Ames, Aldrich’s wife, who had been a paid CIA source, was also charged for her role in accepting approximately $2.5 million for providing highly confidential information to the KGB. Both Ames and his wife were later convicted. Ames was sentenced to life in prison, while his wife, as part of a plea-bargain agreement, was a given a five-year sentence;
2013 – Drew Peterson, the Chicago-area police officer who’d gained notoriety after his much-younger fourth wife vanished in 2007, was sentenced to 38 years in prison for murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio;
2013 – Scientists discover that bumblebees have the ability to sense electric fields around flowers, enabling them to identify specific flowers for pollination;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY !
Now, Off To The Fun Stuff !!!
Today’s Founder’s Quote:
“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions.”
– John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776
Today’s Thought For The Day:
If you needed the CBO to tell you a minimum wage increase would cost jobs, please stay out of politics.
Today’s Adorable Baby Picture:
Today’s Funny Animal Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EIPjPUOtTOw
Today’s ‘Will Your Dog Vouch For You ?’:
A man wrote a letter to a small hotel in a Midwest town he planned to visit on his vacation.
He wrote: “I would very much like to bring my dog with me.
He is well-groomed and very well-behaved.
Would you be willing to permit me to keep him in my room with me at night?”
An immediate reply came from the hotel owner, who wrote:
“Sir, I’ve been operating this hotel for many years.
In all that time, I’ve never had a dog steal towels, bedclothes, silverware or pictures off the walls or use them as a coloring book.
And I’ve never had a dog run out on a hotel bill.
Yes, indeed, your dog is welcome at my hotel.
And if you dog is willing to vouch for you, you’re welcome to stay here too!”
Today’s ‘Try Not To Smile Picture:
Today’s Word Of The Day:
Conflate v. Combine two or more texts, ideas, etc. into one. “Their ideas were conflated in ways that were not helpful.”
Today’s Trivia:
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
Today’s ‘I Fixed It For You Honey’:
Today’s Internet Proverb:
Great groups from little icons grow.
Today’s ‘A Word From Phyllis’:
Burt Reynolds once asked me out – – – I was in his room.
Today’s ‘It’s A Dog’s Life’:
Today’s Clever Words For Clever People:
HEROES: What a guy in a boat does.
Today’s Warning Label:
On Sainsbury’s Peanuts – Warning: contains nuts!
Today’s Tiny Animal With A Tiny Toy:
Today’s Inspirational Quote:
“Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for.”
– John Piper
Today’s Inspirational Music Video:
Above All – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7RIuukDINc
Today’s Verse & Prayer:
Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.
– Isaiah 1:17
Forgive me please, dear Father, for being selfish with your love and grace. I confess that I often find it easy to stay near those who are like me, who look like me, think like me, dress like me. I know that there are so many in the world around me that do not have a friend, much less a defender. Open my eyes, dear LORD, to see those in my world that you would have me protect, encourage, and bless. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Today’s Funny Church Sign:
Until Tomorrow – America, Bless God !!!
