Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 30, the 120th day of 2014 and there are 245 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 !!!
Sadly, today we close out ‘National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month.” ‘National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day” officially passed on April 12. I am truly saddened but shall be looking forward to next year’s festivities! (For my fellow grilled cheese sandwich fans; I feel your pain; Sorry!!!)
OOPS!
Democrats have been claiming of late that ObamaCare would not be the main issue in this year’s midterms – as the president said early this month: “the debate is over.” Instead, Democrats have voiced various versions of the assertion made by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as Democrats were announcing their “pivot” away from the beleaguered law. Schumer said that the focus of the fall elections would instead be “jobs, good paying jobs” and increasing wages. After today’s numbers on the economy, Democrats may want to go ahead and pivot on back. The economy slowed dramatically in the first three months of the year, according to the Commerce Department, which said growth slowed to ONE TENTH of a percent from January to March. That’s the weakest performance since the end of 2012, and down from 2.6 percent growth in the last quarter of 2013. We realistically need to be at 3% to break even and 4/5% to produce those “jobs, good paying jobs”! And just incase you forgot, this doesn’t help either: Debt Clock. This comes as the Financial Times reports that the People’s Republic of China, (the guy we owe a considerable amount of that money to), is set to pass the U.S. this year as the world’s leading economic power, several years sooner than the previous estimate of 2019. The reason: “With the IMF expecting China’s economy to have grown 24 per cent between 2011 and 2014 while the US is expected to expand only 7.6 per cent, China is likely to overtake the US this year.”
So, What Happened Today In 1945?
Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin under ground bunker
At the end of World War II in the European theater, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.
Since at least 1943, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany would fold under the pressure of the Allied forces. In February of that year, the German 6th Army, lured deep into the Soviet Union, was annihilated at the Battle of Stalingrad and German hopes for a sustained offensive on both fronts evaporated. Then, in June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed at Normandy, France, and began systematically to push the Germans back toward Berlin. By July 1944, several German military commanders acknowledged their imminent defeat and plotted to remove Hitler from power so as to negotiate a more favorable peace. Their attempts to assassinate Hitler failed, however, and in his reprisals, Hitler executed over 4,000 fellow countrymen.
In January 1945, facing a siege of Berlin by the Soviets, Hitler withdrew to his bunker to live out his final days. Located 55 feet under the chancellery, the shelter contained 18 rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. Though he was growing increasingly mad, Hitler continued to give orders and meet with such close subordinates as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels. He also married his long-time mistress Eva Braun just two days before his suicide.
In his last will and testament, Hitler appointed Admiral Karl Donitz as head of state and Goebbels as chancellor. He then retired to his private quarters with Braun where it is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his “beloved” dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol.
Hitler and Braun’s bodies were hastily cremated in the chancellery garden, as Soviet forces closed in on the building. When the Soviets reached the chancellery, they removed Hitler’s ashes, continually changing their location so as to prevent Hitler devotees from creating a memorial at his final resting place. Only eight days later, on May 8, 1945, the German forces issued an unconditional surrender, leaving Germany to be carved up by the four Allied powers.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 30 In History:
311 – Shortly before his death, Roman Emperor Galerius issued his Edict of Toleration which legally recognizes Christians and ending their persecution in the Roman Empire;
1349 – The entire Jewish community at Radolszell, Germany is exterminated;
1563 – All Jews are expelled from France by order of Charles VI;
1776 – During the American Revolutionary War, in a letter to Reverend Samuel Cooper dated April 30, 1776, Samuel Adams writes of his hopes for another battle between British and American troops, stating his belief that, ” One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress.” At the time of the letter’s composition, General George Washington had successfully driven the British from Boston with his victory at Dorchester Heights on March 17. The British were left with very meager footholds in North America: Quebec, the Floridas and Nova Scotia, Canada;
1798 – The United States Department of the Navy is established by an Act of Congress which was initiated by the recommendation of James McHenry to provide a government organizational structure to the United States Navy and, from 1834 onwards, for the United States Marine Corps and when directed by the President, the United States Coast Guard as a service within the Navy;
1803 – Representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States. A formal treaty for the Louisiana Purchase, antedated to April 30, was signed two days later. On April 30, 1812, exactly nine years after the Louisiana Purchase agreement was made, the first of 13 states to be carved from the territory–Louisiana–was admitted into the Union as the 18th U.S. state;
1864 – In the American Civil War, at the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry in Arkansas, Union troops under General Frederick Steele fight off a Confederate army under General Edmund Kirby Smith as the Yankees retreat towards Little Rock, Arkansas. Jenkins’ Ferry came at the end of a major Union offensive in Arkansas. While a Federal force under General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River in Louisiana towards Shreveport, Steele led his troops from Little Rock into southwestern Arkansas. The combined effort promised to secure northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas for the Union before the armies moved west to invade Texas. In April, however, the plans ran afoul when Banks was defeated at Mansfield, Louisiana, and Steele found himself dangerously low on supplies. The Union suffered 700 men killed, wounded, and missing out of 4,000, while the Confederates lost about 1,000 out of 8,000. Some of the Rebel dead included wounded troops who were killed by members of the 2nd Kansas Colored regiment, exacting a measure of revenge for dozens of comrades from the 1st Kansas Colored murdered on the battlefield at Poison Spring. When it was over, Smith and the Confederates controlled the field but they had failed to destroy Steele’s army;
1864 – The state of New York becomes first state to charge a hunting license fee;
1864 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ five-year-old son, Joseph Evan Davis, died in a fall at the Confederate White House in Richmond, Virginia;
1900 – Train engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers;
1927 – The Federal Industrial Institution for Women, the first women’s federal prison, opens in Alderson, West Virginia. All women serving federal sentences of more than a year were to be brought there. Reform efforts had a good chance for success since the women sent to Alderson were far from hardened criminals. At the Federal Industrial Institution, the vast majority of the women were imprisoned for drug and alcohol charges imposed during the Prohibition era;
1931 – The George Washington Bridge, linking New York City and New Jersey, opens;
1943 – During World War II, to deceive German Nazi forces, the British submarine HMS Seraph drops ‘the man who never was,’ a dead man the British planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain prior to the invasion of Sicily;
1948 – During the (first) Cold War, the United States and 20 Latin American nations sign the charter establishing the Organization of American States (OAS). The new institution was designed to facilitate better political relations between the member states and, at least for the United States, to serve as a bulwark against communist penetration of the Western Hemisphere. The OAS never truly functioned as either the United States or the Latin American members had hoped. For the United States, the OAS proved a disappointment since the other member states did not seem to share its own Cold War zeal. In a number of cases–most notably Castro’s Cuba–the OAS refused to give its approval of direct action to remove what the United States felt were “communist threats.” The OAS continues to function, though the end of the Cold War has dramatically lessened its importance in intra-hemispheric affairs;
1973 – During the Watergate investigation, President Richard Nixon announces the resignation of H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and other top aides;
1975 – The day after the American Embassy evacuation, North Vietnamese troops enter the Independence Palace of South Vietnam in Saigon ending the Vietnam War;
1988 – General Manuel Noriega, waving a machete, vowed at a rally to keep fighting U.S. efforts to oust him as Panama’s military ruler;
1993 – Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany, by a man who described himself as a fan of second-ranked German player Steffi Graf. The man, convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, was given a suspended sentence;
2004 – On ABC’s “Nightline,” Ted Koppel read aloud the names of 721 U.S. servicemen and women killed in the Iraq war the Sinclair Broadcast Group refused to air the program on seven ABC stations;
2009 – The Iraq war formally ended for British forces as they handed control of the oil-rich Basra area to United States forces;
2013 – President Barack Obama said he wanted more information about chemical weapons use in the Syrian civil war before deciding on escalating U.S. military or diplomatic responses, despite earlier assertions that use of such weapons would be a “game-changer”;
2013 – The FDA lowered to 15 the age at which girls and women could buy the Plan B emergency contraceptive without a prescription, and said it no longer had to be kept behind pharmacy counters;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!
Today’s Word with Power
As I
A thought comes to mind
Speaking the truth is hard enough. You mean I have to do it in love? Yes, if I am to be Christ’s man or woman, I must speak to others as he did.
That leads me to a verse
Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
– Ephesians 4:15
That brings a prayer
Father, forgive me for the bitterness in my heart and unfairness on my lips. Through your Spirit, help me better use my speech to bless others and glorify you. May I speak your truth with your love today in all my conversations. Through him who is Truth and Love I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
