Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 15, the 135th day of 2014 and there are 230 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 !!!
This morning, I was just thinkin – History might be a better guide than good intentions when attempting to cure the world’s ills.
So, What Happened Today In 1864?
VMI Cadets fight in the Battle of New Market
During the American Civil War, students from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington participate in the Battle of New Market, Virginia, part of the multipronged Union offensive in the spring of 1864 designed to take Virginia out of the war. Central to this campaign was Ulysses S. Grant’s epic struggle with Robert E. Lee around Richmond.
Union General Franz Sigel had been sent to apply pressure on a key agricultural region, the Shenandoah Valley. He marched south out of Winchester in early May to neutralize the valley, which was always a threat to the North. The Shenandoah was not only a breadbasket that supplied Southern armies, it also led to the Potomac north of Washington. The Confederates had used the valley very effectively in 1862, when Stonewall Jackson kept three Federal armies occupied while keeping pressure off of Richmond.
But the Confederates were hard pressed to offer any opposition to Sigel’s 6,500 troops. Lee was struggling against Grant and was badly outnumbered. He instructed John Breckinridge to drive Sigel from the valley but could offer him little in the way of troops to do the job. Breckinridge mustered a force of regular troops and militia units and pulled together 5,300 men. They included 247 cadets from nearby VMI, some of whom were just 15 years old.
On May 15, Breckinridge attacked Sigel’s troops at New Market. Sigel fell back a half mile, reformed his lines, and began to shell the Confederate center. It was at this juncture that Breckinridge reluctantly sent the VMI cadets into battle. The young students were part of an attack that captured two Yankee guns. Nine of the cadets were killed and 48 were wounded, but Sigel suffered a humiliating defeat and began to withdraw from the valley.
The courage of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market became legendary, and the pressure was temporarily off of the Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley. Breckinridge was able to send part of his force east to reinforce Lee.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 15 In History:
1213 – King John of England submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs and names Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208;
1602 – English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod in present day Massachusetts;
1618 – Astronomer Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law;
1730 – Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet;
1756 – The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years. By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France’s allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India. The Seven Years War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots;
1776 – Virginia endorsed American independence from Britain;
1781 – During the American Revolution, a 352-man-strong Loyalist force commanded by Major Andrew Maxwell surrenders a fortified frame building, named Fort Granby, to a Patriot force in South Carolina. Maxwell is better remembered for gathering plunder than any conspicuous military ability. When a Patriot force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee assaulted his position at Fort Granby, Maxwell agreed to surrender, provided he was allowed to maintain possession of his plunder. After some haggling, Lee accepted the proposition, and Maxwell departed the fort with two wagon-loads of personal loot. The Loyalists then traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, where they were to be exchanged for Patriot prisoners of war. A valuable position, with ammunition and provisions, fell to the Continentals without the loss of a man. Lee’s most famous son, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, was born in 1807;
1800 – President John Adams orders the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia and set up shop in the nation’s new capital in Washington, D.C. After Congress adjourned its last meeting in Philadelphia on May 15, Adams told his cabinet to make sure Congress and all federal offices were up and running smoothly in their new headquarters by June 15, 1800. Philadelphia officially ceased to serve as the nation’s capital as of June 11, 1800. At the time, there were only about 125 federal employees. Official documents and archives were transferred from Philadelphia to the new capital by ship over inland waterways. President and Mrs. Adams did not move in to the (unfinished) president’s mansion until November of that year. Settling in to the White House was a challenge for the new first lady. In December, Abigail Adams wrote to a friend later she had to line-dry their clothes in what eventually became the East Room;
1817 – The first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) opens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
1820 – The United States Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy;
1856 – Angered by the shooting of a prominent journalist, San Franciscans form their second vigilance committee to combat lawlessness. The need for vigilance committees in San Francisco was obvious. Only two years after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, San Francisco had grown from a sleepy little village with 900 inhabitants to a booming metropolis with more than 200,000 residents. The sudden influx of people overwhelmed the city. Harried law enforcement officials found it nearly impossible to maintain law and order, and chaos often reigned in the streets, which were lined with saloons and gambling parlors. Attracted by the promise of gold, marauding bands of Australian criminals called “Sydney ducks” robbed and extorted the people of San Francisco with near impunity;
1862 – During the American Civil War, at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, also known as the Battle of Fort Darling, took place in Chesterfield County, Virginia as part of the Peninsula Campaign. Five Union Navy warships, including the ironclads USS Monitor and USS Galena steamed up the James River to test the defenses of Richmond, the Confederate capital. They encountered submerged obstacles and deadly accurate fire from the batteries of Fort Darling which inflicted severe damage on the Galena and the Union Navy was forced to turn back;
1896 – A particularly intense tornado hits Sherman, Texas and kills 73 people. It is estimated that the tornado was a rare F5 tornado, in which winds exceeded 260 miles per hour. Storms of that strength happen, on average, less than once a year. The tornado that hit Sherman is considered an F5 because of the complete and utter destruction it caused. Most of the homes it demolished were totally razed–there was hardly a trace left of them when the twister passed. The Houston Street Bridge in Sherman was smashed and brought down by the tornado. The trunk lid from a car in Sherman ended up 35 miles away;
1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil Company was a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and ordered its breakup;
1916 – During World War I, the Austrian army launches a major offensive operation against their Italian enemies on the Trentino front, in northern Italy. The Austrian offensive began with an opening bombardment of the Italian positions by nearly 400 guns. The Italians were driven off the mountain peaks and forced to retreat south of the town of Rovereto. Nine days after the offensive began, a heavy snow fell, putting a halt to the Austrian advance before they could capture the 4,000-foot peak of Mount Pasubio. Within a week, however, the offensive resumed, and the Austrians continued their resolute advance through the mountain peaks and passes. By the final day of May, thoroughly exhausted but triumphant, they had captured 30,000 Italian prisoners and gained a total of 12 miles of territory since the start of the offensive;
1928 – Mickey Mouse makes his debut when he was seen in the short film ‘Steamboat Willie’, one of the first sound cartoons. He went on to appear in over 130 films;
1930 – A registered nurse, Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard an Oakland-to-Chicago flight operated by Boeing Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines;
1937 – Madeleine Albright, America’s first female secretary of state, is born Maria Jana Korbelova in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). The daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel, Albright fled to England with her family after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. Though Albright long believed they had fled for political reasons, she learned as an adult that her family was Jewish and that three of her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. The family returned home after World War II ended but immigrated to the United States in 1948 after a Soviet-sponsored Communist coup seized power in Prague. Josef Korbel became dean of the school of international relations at the University of Denver (where he would later train another female secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice). Albright’s term ended with the election of President George W. Bush in 2000. Though there was talk of her entering Czech politics, she returned to her teaching post at Georgetown and became chair of a nonprofit organization, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs;
1941 – During World War II, the jet-propelled Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 aircraft flies successfully over Cranwell, England, in the first test of an Allied aircraft using jet propulsion. The aircraft’s turbojet engine, which produced a powerful thrust of hot air, was devised by Frank Whittle, an English aviation engineer and pilot generally regarded as the father of the jet engine. Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of air commodore. That year, he was awarded 100,000 pounds by the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors and was knighted. In 1977, he became a research professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He died in Columbia, Maryland, in 1996;
1942 – Army Lieutenant Ronald Reagan, a cavalry officer, applies for reassignment to the Army Air Force, where he would eventually put his thespian background to use on World War II propaganda films. The transfer was approved on June 9, 1942, and Reagan was given a job as a public relations officer for the First Motion Picture Unit. The First Motion Picture Unit (FMPU)–its acronym was pronounced fum-poo–produced military training, morale and propaganda films to aid the war effort;
1942 – During World War II, gasoline rationing began in 17 Eastern states as an attempt to help the American war effort during World War II. By the end of the year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ensured that mandatory gasoline rationing was in effect in all 50 states. America had been debating its entrance into World War II until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The following day, Congress almost unanimously approved Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war against Japan and three days later Japan’s allies Germany and Italy declared war against the United States. Ration stamps for gasoline were issued by local boards and pasted to the windshield of a family or individual’s automobile. The type of stamp determined the gasoline allotment for that automobile. Black stamps, for example, signified non-essential travel and mandated no more than three gallons per week, while red stamps were for workers who needed more gas, including policemen and mail carriers. As a result of the restrictions, gasoline became a hot commodity on the black market, while legal measures of conserving gas–such as carpooling–also flourished. In a separate attempt to reduce gas consumption, the government passed a mandatory wartime speed limit of 35 mph, known as the “Victory Speed”;
1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, whose members came to be known as WACs;
1963 – Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date. Faith 7 was the capstone of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first astronaut into orbit in 1962. Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space. He was the first American astronaut to spend more than a day in space. On the afternoon of May 16, Faith 7 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, four miles from the recovery ship Kearsarge. Cooper was honored by parades in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. where he addressed a joint session of Congress, and in New York City where he was greeted by a massive ticker-tape crowd. Later Shawnee, Oklahoma–Cooper’s hometown–celebrated the return of the sixth Mercury astronaut from space;
1963 – Pop group, Peter – Paul and Mary win their 1st Grammy for “If I Had a Hammer”. You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKvpONl3No;
1967 – In the Vietnam War, U.S. forces just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) come under heavy fire as Marine positions between Dong Ha and Con Thien are pounded by North Vietnamese artillery. At the same time, more than 100 Americans were killed or wounded during heavy fighting along the DMZ. On May 17 and 18, the Con Thien base was shelled heavily. Dong Ha, Gio Linh, Cam Lo, and Camp Carroll were also bombarded. On May 18, a force of 5,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a communist build up in the area and to deny the use of the zone as an infiltration route into South Vietnam. On May 19, the U.S. State Department said the offensive in the DMZ was “purely a defensive measure” against a “considerable buildup of North Vietnam troops.” The North Vietnamese government on May 21 called the invasion of the zone “a brazen provocation” that “abolished the buffer character of the DMZ as provided by the Geneva agreements”;
1970 – During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon presents Sgt. John L. Levitow with the Medal of Honor for heroic action performed on February 24, 1969, over Long Binh Army Post in South Vietnam. Then an Airman 1st Class, Levitow was the loadmaster on a Douglas AC-47 gunship. His aircraft had been supporting several Army units that were engaged in battle with North Vietnamese troops when an enemy mortar hit the aircraft’s right wing, exploding in the wing frame. Thousands of pieces of shrapnel ripped through the plane’s thin skin, wounding four of the crew. Levitow was struck forty times in his right side; although bleeding heavily from these wounds, he threw himself on an activated, smoking magnesium flare, dragged himself and the flare to the open cargo door, and tossed the flare out of the aircraft just before it ignited. For saving his fellow crewmembers and the gunship, Airman Levitow was nominated for the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. He was one of only two enlisted airmen to win the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam and was one of only five enlisted airmen ever to win the medal, the first since World War II;
1972 – During an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate, is shot by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an irrevocable end;
1972 – The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control;
1974 – Three Palestinian infiltrators took 100 pupils hostage at a school in the town of Maalot in northern Israel; the gunmen killed 22 children as Israeli troops stormed the building, killing the hostage-takers;
1988 – More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992;
2004 – A 40-ton steel girder dropped from a freeway overpass construction site into morning traffic in Golden, Colorado, crushing one car and killing a family of three;
2009 – Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta defended the agency against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that she was misled in 2002 about the use of waterboarding on detainees;
2013 – Congressional Republicans and Democrats challenged Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation of national security leaks and its failure to talk to The Associated Press before issuing subpoenas for the news service’s telephone records; Holder defended the inquiry while pointing out he had removed himself from any decision on subpoenas;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Number 10 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states
Wormsloe Historic Site, Savannah, Georgia
As I
A thought
“I don’t know!” … has to be one of the hardest phrases for us to use. When thinking about God, that’s really all we can say. What we know about God is only what He has chosen to reveal to us. He is the Mystery of all mysteries. He is the supreme knowable ‘Unknown’. Yet what we do know of him, what he has revealed to us in Jesus, is not only mighty and awesome, but loving and merciful.
Leads to a verse
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you do not know if profit will come from one activity or another – or maybe both.
Ecclesiastes 11:5-6
That brings a prayer
Awesome Father God, I can only offer my wonder and awe. When I consider the vastness of the universe in which our tiny planet spins, I am humbled at your wonderfully complex and expansive soveriegnty. At the same time Father, I treasure your nearness. You are the good far above all I know, the God who transcends space and time, and also God my Father who is ever near. Thank you for being accessible but not penetrable, available but not controllable. I thank you and praise you in the name of Jesus. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
