Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 9, the 99th day of 2014 and there are 266 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 !!!
As I prepare my ‘today in history’ this morning:
As I note that one of our last items in history today is concerning a knife stabbing incident at a school in Texas exactly one year ago today. As I type in closing, I’m watching yet another school stabbing incident in a school in Pennsylvania just this morning where there are as many as 20 people stabbed with 4 in critical condition. This amongst almost continuous school or workplace shootings and my own hometown is being overrun with crime. It’s not the guns my brothers and sisters!!! It’s not the knives my brothers and sisters!!!
IT’S THE LACK OF GOD IN OUR HOMES, IN OUR FAMILIES, IN OUR SCHOOLS, IN OUR WORKPLACES, AND EVEN IN SOME OF OUR CHURCHES.
I ask everyone to put it up in prayer that America will return to allowing GOD back in our lives and our society!!!
So, What Happened Today In 1865?
General Robert E. Lee surrenders ending the American Civil War
At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
In retreating from the Union army’s Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee’s army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler’s Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property–most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee’s starving men would be given Union rations.
Shushing a band that had begun to play in celebration, General Grant told his officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.
In one of the great ironies of the war, the surrender took place in the parlor of Wilmer McClean’s home. McClean had once lived along the banks of Bull Run, Virginia, the site of the first major battle of the war in July 1861. Seeking refuge from the fighting, McClean decided to move out of the Washington-Richmond corridor to try to avoid the fighting that would surely take place there. He moved to Appomattox Court House only to see the war end in his home.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 9 In History:
715 – Constantine ends his reign as Catholic Pope;
1241 – In the Battle of Liegnitz, the Mongol armies defeat the Poles and Germans;
1413 – Henry V is crowned the King of England;
1483 – Edward V (aged 12) succeeds his father Edward IV as king of England. He was never crowned, and disappeared, presumed murdered, after incarceration in the Tower of London with his younger brother Richard;
1682 – Robert La Salle claims lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France;
1731 – British Captain Robert Jenkins loses an ear to a band of Spanish brigands, starting a war between Britain and Spain which became known as ‘The War of Jenkins’ Ear’;
1778 – During the American Revolution, Jeremiah Wadsworth is named commissary general of purchases for the Continental Army at the insistence of General George Washington;
1881 – In the American ‘Old West’, after a one-day trial, Billy the Kid is found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico sheriff and is sentenced to hang. There is no doubt that Billy the Kid did indeed shoot the sheriff, though he had done so in the context of the bloody Lincoln County War, a battle between two powerful groups of ranchers and businessmen fighting for economic control of Lincoln County. When his boss, rancher John Tunstall, was murdered before his eyes in February 1878, the hotheaded young Billy swore vengeance. Unfortunately, the leader of the men who murdered Tunstall was the sheriff of Lincoln County, William Brady. When Billy and his partners murdered the sheriff several months later, they became outlaws, regardless of how corrupt Brady may have been;
1914 – The Tampico Incident took place as eight U.S. sailors were arrested by Mexican authorities for allegedly entering a restricted area and held for a short time before being released. Although Mexico offered a verbal apology, the U.S. demanded a more formal show of contrition; tensions escalated to the point that President Woodrow Wilson sent a naval task force to invade and occupy Veracruz, which in turn led to the downfall of Mexican President Victoriano Huerta;
1918 – In World War I, German troops launch “Operation Georgette” the second phase of their final, last-ditch spring offensive, against Allied positions in Armentieres, France, on the River Lys. On March 21, 1918, the Germans under Erich Ludendorff, chief of the general staff, launched their first major offensive on the Western Front in more than a year, attacking the Allies in the Somme River region of France and training their huge guns on Paris. Despite the initial success of Operation Georgette, the British defensive positions in Armentieres were better prepared and more tenacious than those at the Somme, and the Germans managed to advance only 12 kilometers by the time Ludendorff closed down the operation on April 29. By this time, morale on both sides of the line was at a low point, due to heavy losses, but neither was ready to give in. The Germans looked to the next stage of their offensive, against the French at the Aisne River, as the Allies readied their defenses, each side believing that the outcome of the First World War hung in the balance;
1939 – On Easter Sunday in 1939, more than 75,000 people come to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear famed African-American contralto Marian Anderson give a free open-air concert. Anderson had been scheduled to sing at Washington’s Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution, a political organization that helped manage the concert hall, denied her the right to perform because of her race. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned her membership from the organization in protest, and Anderson’s alternate performance at the Lincoln Memorial served greatly to raise awareness of the problem of racial discrimination in America;
1940 – During World War II, Nazi Germany invades neutral Norway, surprising the Norwegian and British defenders of the country and capturing several strategic points along the Norwegian coast. During the invasion’s preliminary phase, Norwegian Fascists under Vidkun Quisling acted as a so-called fifth column for the German invaders, seizing Norway’s nerve centers, spreading false rumors, and occupying military bases and other locations. In June, Norway fell to the Nazis. Quisling was made head of a puppet government but was vigorously opposed by the Norwegian resistance, the most effective resistance movement in all of Nazi-occupied Europe. After the German surrender in May 1945, he was arrested, convicted of high treason, and shot. From his name comes the word quisling, meaning “traitor” in several languages;
1942 – Major General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders at Bataan, Philippines–against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders–and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, are taken captive by the Japanese. The prisoners were at once led 55 miles from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan peninsula, to San Fernando, on what became known as the “Bataan Death March.” At least 600 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died because of the extreme brutality of their captors, who starved, beat, and kicked them on the way; those who became too weak to walk were bayoneted. Those who survived were taken by rail from San Fernando to POW camps, where another 16,000 Filipinos and at least 1,000 Americans died from disease, mistreatment, and starvation. After the war, the International Military Tribunal, established by MacArthur, tried Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu, commander of the Japanese invasion forces in the Philippines. He was held responsible for the death march, a war crime, and was executed by firing squad on April 3, 1946;
1947 – The town of Woodward, Oklahoma, is nearly wiped off the map by a powerful tornado on this day in 1947. More than 100 people died in Woodward, and 80 more lost their lives elsewhere in the series of twisters that hit the U.S. heartland that day;
1950 – Comedian Bob Hope makes his first television appearance;
1959 – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton. The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from a group of 32 candidates to take part in Project Mercury, America’s first manned space program. NASA planned to begin manned orbital flights in 1961;
1963 – British statesman Winston Churchill was proclaimed an honorary U.S. citizen by President John F. Kennedy. Churchill, unable to attend, watched the proceedings live on television in his London home;
1966 – The statue of Winston Churchill is dedicated at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.;
1968 – Murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., is buried;
1987 – During the (first) Cold War, just days before he is to travel to Moscow for talks on arms control and other issues, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz states that he is “damned angry” about possible Soviet spy activity in the American embassy in the Soviet Union. Soviet officials indignantly replied that the espionage charges were “dirty fabrications.” Secretary Shultz was scheduled to travel to Moscow for talks on a number of matters, but the foremost issue was the reduction of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. In the long run, the arms negotiations were not affected by the spying allegations. In December 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Treaty, which eliminated U.S. and Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. In the short run, however, the episode indicated that while relations between the United States and the Soviet Union had improved dramatically in recent years, long-held animosities and suspicions lingered just beneath the surface;
2002 – Funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Mother of Queen Elizabeth II, is held at Westminster Abbey in the United Kingdom. More than a million people line the streets;
2004 – Four employees of Halliburton subsidiary KBR were killed in an attack on a fuel truck convoy near Baghdad, Iraq; a U.S. soldier in the convoy, Sgt. Elmer Krause, was found dead weeks later. Four people went missing, including Army Spec. Keith M. Maupin, whose remains were found in 2008. The body of civilian truck driver William Bradley was found in January 2005; Thomas Hamill escaped his captors in May 2004; Timothy Bell remains unaccounted for;
2013 – Fourteen people were injured by a knife-wielding attacker at Lone Star College in Cypress, Texas; suspect Dylan Quick faces trial;
2013 – In response to increased tension on the Korean peninsula, Japan set Patriot missiles in central Tokyo and Okinawa Island and sent two warships to patrol the Sea of Japan;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!!!
Now for today’s verse & a prayer:
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
– Hebrews 1:3
My precious Lord, as you have so many times in the past, you take these humble human words and bring them to the Father as my friend and brother. Thank you for your sacrifice for my sins. Thank you for your sustaining presence in our universe. Thank you for your daily intercession. Thank you for being God-for-me at the Father’s side. To the glorious, majestic and holy God, who sent Jesus as Savior, be glory, honor, and adoration forever and ever. Amen
Until the next time, America – Bless GOD!!!
