Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is March 20, the 79th day of 2014 and there are 286 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 !!!
We need to get started straight off the bat here so here’s my ‘It’s Just An Observation’:
So, What Happened Today In 1945!
British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma
During World War II, the 14th Army, under British Gen. William J. Slim, captures the Burmese city of Mandalay from the Japanese, bringing the Allies one step closer to liberating all of Burma.
Mandalay, a city on the Irrawaddy River in central Burma (now Myanmar), was the center of the communications in Burma, as well as of rail, road, and river travel. The British conquered Mandalay, the second-largest city in Burma, in 1885. Burma as a whole was detached from India by the British in the Government of India Act of 1935 and made a Crown Colony with its own constitution and parliament. Burmese nationalists plotted with the Japanese in the late 1930s to wrest Burma from the British Empire and bring the nation within the Japanese Empire. Attempts by the nationalists to undermine the building of the Burmese Road (which would create an overland link between the West and China) and incite riots failed, and Burma remained a British colony.
On December 8, 1941, the Japanese took matters into their own hands and invaded Burma. Troops landed at Victoria Point, at the southern tip of the peninsula. Moving north, the Japanese troops, composed mostly of disgruntled Burmese nationals who fashioned themselves an army of liberation, determined to expel the Brits from their homeland, advanced on Rangoon, Lashio (the Burmese end of the Burma Road into China), and Mandalay, which fell on May 2, 1942. With the Japanese holding central Burma, China was cut off from the West-and Western supplies.
In early 1944, British Gen. William J. Slim, commander of the 14th Army, led an offensive against the Japanese that broke a siege at Imphal. By mid-December, buoyed by his success, Slim launched an offensive against Meiktila, east of the Irrawaddy River and a key communication post between Rangoon and Mangalay. A strategy of misdirection was employed, with one corps headed toward Mandalay even as Slim’s immediate objective was Meiktila. With the Japanese preoccupied with the first corps, a second corps took Meiktila on March 3, 1945, and Mandalay fell on the 20th. The 14th Army now controlled a significant swath of central Burma. Rangoon, the capital, would fall in May, returning Burma to British hands.
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On March 20 In History:
1345 – According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death, is created from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345”. The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead in its wake. Despite what these scholars claimed, it is now known that bubonic plague, the most common ailment known as the Black Death, is caused by the yersinia pestis bacterium. The plague was carried by fleas that usually traveled on rats, but jumped off to other mammals when the rat died. It most likely first appeared in humans in Mongolia around 1320;
1413 – King Henry IV, the first English monarch of the Lancastrian dynasty, dies after years of illness, and his eldest son, Henry, ascends to the English throne;
1727 – Physicist, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton died in London, England;
1778 – During the American Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee present themselves to France’s King Louis XVI as official representatives of the United States on this day in 1778. Louis XVI was skeptical of the fledgling republic, but his dislike of the British eventually overcame these concerns and France officially recognized the United States in February 1778;
1792 – In Paris, France, the Legislative Assembly approves the use of the guillotine;
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule;
1841 – Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered the first detective story, is published;
1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war”;
1854 – In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson had shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery;
1886 – The first Alternating Current power plant in U.S. begins commercial operation in Massachusetts;
1922 – The decommissioned United States Navy ship, USS Jupiter, is converted into the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and was recommissioned as the USS Langley;
1928 – James Packard, co-founder of the Packard Motor Company, a pioneering American automaker, dies at the age of 64. During Packard’s heyday in the 1930s, its vehicles were driven by movie stars and business titans;
1933 – The state of Florida electrocuted Giuseppe Zangara for shooting to death Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak at a Miami event attended by President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, the presumed target, the previous February;
1933 – In Germany, Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp is completed;
1952 – The United States Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace with Japan by a vote of 66-10 restoring sovereignty to Japan;
1953 – During the (first) Cold War, the Soviet government announces that Nikita Khrushchev has been selected as one of five men named to the new office of Secretariat of the Communist Party. Khrushchev’s selection was a crucial first step in his rise to power in the Soviet Union—an advance that culminated in Khrushchev being named secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953, and premier in 1958;
1954 – In the Vietnam War, after a force of 60,000 Viet Minh with heavy artillery had surrounded 16,000 French troops, news of Dien Bien Phu’s impending fall reaches Washington. The battle, which far exceeded the size and scope of anything to date in the war between the French and the Viet Minh, began with a massive Viet Minh artillery barrage and was followed by an infantry assault. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and other members of the Eisenhower administration were stunned at the turn of events and discussions were held to decide on a course of action. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur Radford proposed the use of nuclear strikes against the Viet Minh. Other options included massive conventional air strikes, paratrooper drops, and the mining of Haiphong Harbor. In the end, President Eisenhower decided that the situation was too far gone and ordered no action to be taken to aid the French. Fierce fighting continued at Dien Bien Phu until May 7, 1954, when the Viet Minh overran the last French positions. The shock at the fall of Dien Bien Phu led France, already plagued by public opposition to the war, to agree to grant independence to Vietnam at the Geneva Conference in 1954;
1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson sends a telegram to Governor George Wallace of Alabama in which he agrees to send federal troops to supervise a planned African-American civil-rights march in Wallace’s home state. Later that day, from his ranch in Texas, LBJ read the telegram to reporters at a news conference. He told the press that he supported the constitutional rights of the marchers to walk peaceably and safely without injury or loss of life from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and expressed dismay at the governor’s refusal to provide them the protection of the Alabama police;
1968 – During the Vietnam War, Retired U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Shoup estimates that up to 800,000 men would be required just to defend South Vietnamese population centers. He further stated that the United States could only achieve military victory by invading the North, but argued that such an operation would not be worth the cost. Also on this day: The New York Times publishes excerpts from General Westmoreland’s classified end-of-year report, which indicated that the U.S. command did not believe the enemy capable of any action even approximating the Tet Offensive. This report, Shoup’s comments, and other conflicting assessments of the situation in Vietnam contributed to the growing dissatisfaction among a large segment of American society with the Vietnam War. At the end of the previous year, Johnson administration officials had insisted that the United States had turned a corner in the war. The strength and scope of the Tet Offensive flew in the face of these claims, feeding a widening credibility gap. Despite administration assurances that the situation was getting better in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had launched a massive attack at 3:00 A.M. on January 31, 1968, simultaneously hitting Saigon, Da Nang, Hue, and other major cities, towns, and military bases throughout South Vietnam. One assault team got within the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon before they were destroyed. In the end, the communist forces were defeated, but the US suffered a fatal strategic blow. The Tet Offensive cost the government the confidence of the American people and public opinion turned against the war;
1974 – Britain’s Princess Anne was the target of a kidnapping attempt near Buckingham Palace; the would-be abductor, Ian Ball, was captured;
1984 – In a devastating blow to Religious Freedom, the United States Senate rejects amendment to permit spoken prayer in public schools;
1995 – At the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, Japan, five two-man terrorist teams from the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, riding on separate subway trains, converge at the Kasumigaseki station and secretly release lethal sarin gas into the air. The terrorists then took a sarin antidote and escaped while the commuters, blinded and gasping for air, rushed to the exits. Twelve people died, and 5,500 were treated in hospitals, some in a comatose state. Most of the survivors recovered, but some victims suffered permanent damage to their eyes, lungs, and digestive systems. A United States Senate subcommittee later estimated that if the sarin gas had been disseminated more effectively at Kasumigaseki station, a hub of the Tokyo subway system, tens of thousands might have been killed;
1999 – Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Britain became the first aviators to fly a hot-air balloon around the world nonstop as they floated over Mauritania past longitude 9 degrees west. They landed safely in Egypt the next day;
2004 – The Rev. Karen Dammann, a lesbian Methodist pastor, was acquitted of violating church doctrine in a trial held in Bothell, Washington;
2006 – Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country’s banana crop;
2009 – President Barack Obama reached out to the Iranian people in a video with Farsi subtitles, saying the U.S. was prepared to end years of strained relations if Tehran toned down its bellicose rhetoric; Iranian officials dismissed the overture, saying they wanted concrete change from Washington before they were ready to enter a dialogue;
2013 – Five former elected officials of Bell, Calif., were convicted of misappropriating public funds by paying themselves huge salaries while raising taxes on residents; one defendant was acquitted;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!
Now, Off To The Fun Stuff!!!
Today’s ‘Computer Humor’:
Today’s Thought For The Day:
“Spring makes everything young again except man.”
– Jean Paul Richter, German author (1763-1825)
Today’s Patriotic Quote:
“When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.”
– Adlai E. Stevenson
Today’s ‘Impeccable Timing’ Picture:
Today’s Quote For The Day:
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live a life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Today’s Word For The Day:
Cerebral (cer·e·bral) adj. Appealing to or requiring the use of the intellect; intellectual rather than emotional: “Her methods were cerebral, analytical, and cautious.”
Today’s ‘It’s A Dog’s Life’ Picture:
Today’s Motivational Thought:
Feel a little of life’s goodness and let that goodness be magnified throughout your being. Feel a little goodness and make a lot more.
Today’s Trivia:
A golf hole is four inches deep.
Today’s ‘I Fixed It For You Honey’ Picture:
Today’s ‘Clever Words For Clever People’:
RUBBERNECK: What you do to relax your wife!
Today’s ‘Crazy Law’:
In Connecticut – In order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce.
Today’s ‘This Is Funny’ Picture:
Today’s ‘Least We Forget’ Music Video:
Welcome Home – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8gbSvIOx10
Today’s Inspirational Music Video:
There is a GOD – https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLEE7339CD2DDF6C12&v=AV8c6amvevg&feature=player_detailpage
Today’s Inspirational Thought:
Today’s Verse & Prayer:
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
– 1 Peter 2:2-3
Mighty God, thank you for loving me and saving me. I really want to mature in your grace. Bless me today as I seek to pattern holy habits and fill myself spiritually with the things that will help me grow. But Holy God, I know that true growth only comes from you, so I ask you to strengthen me by your Spirit as I pursue your character. In Jesus’ mighty name I pray. Amen
Today’s Funny Church Sign:
And just incase you forgot what it looks like, here is some ‘AWE of GOD’ for ya:
Until Tomorrow – America, Bless GOD!!!
