Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is Thursday, June 19, the 170th day of 2014 and there are 195 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 !!!
So, What Happened Today In 1944?
United States scores a major victory against Japanese in the Battle of the Philippine Sea
In World War II, in what would become known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. U.S. troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan, having landed there on the 15th. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to U.S. attack. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas. But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, the United States, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded to shoot down more than 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes in the process. It was described in the aftermath as a “turkey shoot.”
Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of U.S. carrier-based fighter planes, this time commanded by Admiral Mitscher, to shoot down an additional 65 Japanese planes and sink another carrier. In total, the Japanese lost 480 aircraft, three-quarters of its total, not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.
Not long after this battle at sea, U.S. Marine divisions penetrated farther into the island of Saipan. Two Japanese commanders on the island, Admiral Nagumo and General Saito, both committed suicide in an attempt to rally the remaining Japanese forces. It succeeded: Those forces also committed a virtual suicide as they attacked the Americans’ lines, losing 26,000 men compared with 3,500 lost by the United States. Within another month, the islands of Tinian and Guam were also captured by the United States.
The Japanese government of Premier Hideki Tojo resigned in disgrace at this stunning defeat, in what many have described as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On June 19 In History:
987 – Louis IV is crowned king of France;
1269 – King Louis IX of Frances decrees all Jews must wear a badge of shame;
1778 – During the American Revolution, following a bitterly cold winter, General George Washington’s troops finally leave Valley Forge after a winter of training;
1848 – The first Women’s Rights Convention convenes in Seneca Falls, New York;
1856 – In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, was nominated for the presidency, and William Dewis Dayton of New Jersey was chosen as the candidate for the vice presidency. The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the official party of the victorious North. After the war, the Republican-dominated Congress forced a radical Reconstruction policy on the South, which saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery and granting voting rights to African American men in the South. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost control of the South, but it continued to dominate the presidency, with a few intermissions, until the ascendance of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933;
1861 – Virginians, in what will soon be West Virginia, elect Francis Pierpoint as their provisional governor;
1864 – During the American Civil War, the most successful and feared Confederate commerce raider of the war, the CSS Alabama, sinks after a spectacular battle off the coast of France with the USS Kearsarge. Built in an English shipyard and sold to the Confederates in 1861, the Alabama was a state-of-the-art ship—220 feet long, with a speed of up to 13 knots. The cruiser was equipped with a machine shop and could carry enough coal to steam for 18 days, but its sails could greatly extend that time. Under its captain, Raphael Semmes, the Alabama prowled the world for three years, capturing U.S. commercial ships. Semmes realized that after three years and 75,000 miles his vessel needed overhauling in a modern shipyard. He sailed around Africa to France, where the French denied him access to a dry dock. Semmes moved out of Cherbourg Harbor and found the USS Kearsarge waiting. In a spectacular battle, the Kearsarge bested and sank the Alabama. During its career, the Alabama captured 66 ships and was hunted by more than 20 Federal warships;
1865 – Union troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free, an event celebrated to this day as “Juneteenth”;
1867 – Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor of Mexico by French Emperor Napoleon III in 1864, is executed on the orders of Benito Juarez, the president of the Mexican Republic;
1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York City from France;
1886 – Future President William Howard Taft marries Helen “Nellie” Herron in Cincinnati, Ohio. According to biographers at the National First Ladies Library, Nellie was strong-willed, bright and ambitious but hid deep-seated insecurities about her looks and worried that she would never be taken seriously because she was a woman. Her father was a law partner of former President Rutherford B. Hayes. She studied music in college and considered going to law school. After college, she organized a literary salon and taught school. Her earliest ambition, however, which she discovered on a trip to the White House at age 16, was to become first lady of the United States. Following an appointment as commissioner to the Philippines, Taft continued to climb the political ladder, with his wife’s encouragement. In 1904, he became President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of war. Four years later, Roosevelt asked Taft which job he would prefer: president or chief justice; Nellie insisted he try for the presidency. With Roosevelt’s backing, Taft won the election of 1908. A year into Taft’s presidency, Nellie suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed; it took her several years to recover. Despite this setback, Nellie organized the planting of cherry trees along the Potomac and designed the scenic Washington Drive. After leaving the White House after one term, Taft taught law at Yale University from 1913 to 1921, when he was appointed chief justice of the United States by President Warren Harding. Nellie Taft was the first first lady to publish her memoirs and is the only first lady besides Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery;
1905 – Some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis. The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five cents. Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission cost and the Greek word for “theater”) soon spread across the country. Their usual offerings included live vaudeville acts as well as short films. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by large modern theaters;
1917 – During the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor. The second son of Prince Edward of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Alexandra of Denmark, and the grandson of Queen Victoria, George was born in 1865 and embarked on a naval career before becoming heir to the throne in 1892 when his older brother, Edward, died of pneumonia. The following year, George married the German princess Mary of Teck (his cousin, a granddaughter of King George III), who had previously been intended for Edward. With the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, strong anti-German feeling within Britain caused sensitivity among the royal family about its German roots. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, also a grandson of Queen Victoria, was the king’s cousin; the queen herself was German. As a result, on June 19, 1917, the king decreed that the royal surname was thereby changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. Also in 1917, he made the controversial decision to deny asylum in Britain to another of his cousins, Czar Nicholas II of Russia, and his family, after the czar abdicated during the Russian Revolution. Czar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their children were subsequently arrested and later murdered by the Bolsheviks;
1934 – The National Archives and Records Administration is established;
1938 – A flood in Montana kills 46 people and seriously injures more than 60 when it washes out train tracks. Custer Creek is a small winding river that runs through 25 miles of the Great Plains on its way to the Yellowstone River. Minor streams like Custer Creek are prone to flash floods because their small capacity can quickly and easily be exceeded during heavy rains. In the early evening, a track walker was sent out to check the rail lines near Custer Creek in Terry, Montana. He reported dry conditions and no problems with the tracks. However, within just a few hours, a sudden downpour overwhelmed Custer Creek. A bridge used by trains was washed out, and when the Olympian Special came through, it went crashing into the raging waters with no warning. Two sleeper cars were buried in the muddy waters. A pitch-black night on the Great Plains made rescue efforts extremely difficult and 46 people lost their lives. The rear cars stayed above the water, but scores of passengers were seriously injured. They could not be evacuated until the following morning;
1942 – During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington D.C. to discuss the invasion of North Africa with President Roosevelt;
1951 – During the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman signs the Universal Military Training and Service Act, (frequently referred to as ‘the draft’, which extends Selective Service until July 1, 1955 and lowers the draft age to 18;
1953 – During the (first) Cold War and a period frequently referred to as ‘The Red Scare’, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths, by the electric chair. The Rosenbergs were the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime and their case remains controversial to this day;
1963 – Soviet cosmonaut, Valentia Tereshkova, becomes the first woman in space;
1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster;
1965 – During the Vietnam War, South Vietnam’s Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky assumes the premiership of the ninth government to be installed within the last 20 months in the country. The Armed Forces Council had chosen Ky as premier on June 11, and Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu was chosen for the relatively powerless position of chief of state. Having risen to the rank of lieutenant general in the fledgling South Vietnamese Air Force, Ky was one of a group of officers who had seized power earlier in 1965 to end the anarchy that had followed in the wake of the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. In 1966, Buddhists, among other political factions, demanded Ky’s ouster, and protests took place in various cities. The disturbances ended partly as a result of a government crackdown and partly because of a loss of support for the Buddhists among dissident elements of the military. Ky continued in his post until the elections of 1967, when be became Vice President of South Vietnam and Thieu became president. Ky served in that position until 1971, when he chose not to run as an opposition candidate against President Nguyen Van Thieu. He reverted to the rank of Air Marshal in the air force;
1968 – In the Vietnam War, in a public ceremony at Hue, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu signs a general mobilization bill. Under the new measure, men between the ages of 18 and 43 were subject to induction into the regular armed forces. Men between the ages of 44 and 50 and youths between 16 and 17 years old were eligible to serve in the part-time civilian People’s Self Defense Organization. An estimated 90,000 17-year-olds in the People’s Self Defense Organization would be transferred to the regular army. It was believed that, by the end of 1968, the law would provide for the induction of an additional 200,000 men. This would begin a steady growth in the size of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces that would accelerate under President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program. There would be 1.1 million men and women in the South Vietnamese forces by the end of 1972;
1972 – Hurricane Agnes, blamed for at least 122 deaths, made landfall over the Florida Panhandle;
1978 – Garfield, the cat, created by Jim Davis, first appears as a comic strip;
1987 – The United States Supreme Court voids the Louisiana law requiring schools to teach creationism;
2004 – The U.S. military stepped up its campaign against militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi launching an airstrike that pulverized a suspected hideout in Fallujah, Iraq;
2009 – Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford was indicted and jailed on charges his international banking empire was really just a Ponzi scheme built on lies, bluster and bribery. Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison after being convicted of bilking investors in a $7.2 billion scheme that involved the sale of fraudulent certificates of deposits;
2012 – Antonis Samaras, the leader of the New Democracy party in Greece, forms a coalition government;
2013 – Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban;
2013 – President Barack Obama, speaking in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, pledged to cut deployed U.S. nuclear weapons by one-third if Cold War foe Russia did the same;
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Another reason why I still enjoy reading the newspaper!
Number 44 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states:
Thor’s Hammer, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
As I
A thought
We were reminded of Solomon’s great dedication speech of the Temple in the Old Testament. Incredibly, Paul asserts that God has taken up his dwelling inside of us through his Spirit, just as majestically as he took up his dwelling in the Jerusalem Temple. Our acceptability to God as his holy dwelling came at a great price to him — the death of his Son! How can we refuse to honor his holy presence in us? How can we not live a holy life in response to his grace?
Leads to a verse
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
– 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
That brings a prayer
Forgive me, dear Father, for the times that I have lost sight of the wonder of your presence within me. The gift of your Spirit is a dazzling and humbling grace. Once again, Father, I pledge to present my body as a living sacrifice to please and honor you as your Temple. At the same time, I acknowledge that I need the presence and power of your Holy Spirit to please and honor you as your holy child. Lead me, cleanse me, purify me, and make me like Jesus by your Spirit. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
