Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is April 29, the 119th day of 2014 and there are 246 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 !!!
I regret not having been able to get the ‘history’ post out for the last couple days my friends. Got up Sunday to discover that my internet link was not working very well and it was taking over 5 minutes to switch from one page to another and would frequently just drop off-line. Contacted my provider who promised me to have it repaired within 72 hours and sure enough, 48 hours later it’s working. Still a little marginal, but good enough to put my post together this morning.
Sunday also started out rather roughly with my health but later in the morning I was feeling well enough to make it to our church which I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make. Following that, I took my wife out for dinner and to a movie for her birthday and our anniversary and I would like to take this opportunity to recommend seeing ‘Heaven Is For Real‘ if you get the chance. It is an excellent movie and we both left the theater very uplifted! (While I grumbled about the cost of a movie ticket today, (we can’t go often), this movie was well worth it!!!
I also ask today that everyone take a moment to offer up a prayer for all those feeling the effects of the devastating tornadoes striking much of the country the last couple days. We here in Albuquerque have put up with very heavy winds, (gusts up to 60/70 mph), for four days now, but it’s nothing compared to the devastation and destruction caused by the storms to our east.
So, What Happened Today In 1974?
President Nixon announces the release of the White House Watergate Tapes
President Richard Nixon announces to the public that he will release transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued in July 1973. The House Judiciary committee accepted 1,200 pages of transcripts the next day, but insisted that the tapes themselves be turned over as well.
In his announcement, Nixon took elaborate pains to explain to the public his reluctance to comply with the subpoena, and the nature of the content he planned to release. He cited his right to executive privilege to protect state secrets and stated that the transcripts were edited by him and his advisors to omit anything “irrelevant” to the Watergate investigation or critical to national security. He invited committee members to review the actual tapes to determine whether or not the president had omitted incriminating evidence in the transcripts. “I want there to be no question remaining,” Nixon insisted, “about the fact that the President has nothing to hide in this matter” and “I made clear there was to be no cover up.”
In June 1972, five men connected with Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) had been caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. A subsequent investigation exposed other illegal activities perpetrated by CREEP and authorized by senior members of Nixon’s administration. It also raised questions about what the president knew about those activities. Nixon vigorously denied involvement in the burglary cover-up, infamously proclaiming “I am not a crook.” In May 1973, the Senate convened an investigation into the Watergate scandal amid public cries for Nixon’s impeachment. In July 1974, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and ordered him to turn over the remaining tapes. On one of them, the president could be heard ordering the FBI to end its investigation of the Watergate break-in; this came to be known as the “smoking gun” that proved Nixon’s guilt.
On August 8, 1974, Nixon avoided a Senate impeachment trial by becoming the first American president to resign from office. He was later pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, “for all offenses against the United States which he committed, or may have committed.”
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On April 29 In History:
1429 – During the Hundred Years’ War, the 17-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc leads a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since October. At the age of 16, “voices” of Christian saints told Joan to aid Charles, the French dauphin, in gaining the French throne and expelling the English from France. Convinced of the validity of her divine mission, Charles furnished Joan with a small force of troops. She led her troops to Orleans, and on April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate bringing needed supplies and troops into the besieged city. On May 8, the siege of Orleans was broken, and the English retreated. In May 1430, while leading another military expedition against the English occupiers of France, Bourguignon soldiers captured Joan and sold her to the English, who tried her for heresy. She was tried as a heretic and witch, convicted, and on May 30, 1431, burned at the stake at Rouen. In 1920, Joan of Arc, already one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church;
1661 – The Chinese Ming dynasty occupies Taiwan;
1707 – Both the English and the Scottish parliaments accept the ‘Act of Union’ forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain;
1776 – In the American Revolutionary War, shortly after the American victory at Boston, Massachusetts, General George Washington orders Brigadier General Nathanael Greene to take command of Long Island and set up defensive positions against a possible British attack on New York City. Greene’s troops were arranged to defend themselves against a frontal attack in Brooklyn Heights across from Manhattan. On August 26, 1776, the British took the vast majority of Long Island with ease, as the island’s population was heavily Loyalist. On August 27, the troops at Brooklyn Heights disintegrated under an unexpected attack from their left flank. In a British effort to earn goodwill for a negotiated peace, they allowed American survivors to flee to Manhattan. Otherwise, the War for Independence might easily have been quashed less than three months after it began;
1852 – The first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus is published;
1854 – By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature, Ashmun Institute, the first college founded solely for African-American students, is officially chartered. The Ashmun Institute, chartered to give theological, classical, and scientific training to African-Americans, opened on January 1, 1857. In 1866, the institution was renamed Lincoln University;
1861 – In the early days of the American Civil War, the Maryland House of Delegates voted 53-13 against seceding from the Union. Meanwhile, in Montgomery, Ala., Confederate President Jefferson Davis asked the Confederate Congress for the authority to wage war;
1862 – During the American Civil War, Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico. The Confederacy lost a major city, and the lower Mississippi soon became a Union highway for 400 miles to Vicksburg, Mississippi;
1913 – Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, received a U.S. patent for a “separable fastener” — later known as “the Zipper”;
1916 – During World War I, in the single largest surrender of troops in British history to that time, some 13,000 soldiers under the command of Sir Charles Townshend give in on April 29, 1916, after withstanding nearly five months under siege by Turkish and German forces at the town of Kut-al-Amara, on the Tigris River in the Basra province of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Townshend and his 13,000 men were taken prisoner;
1945 – At the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler marries Eva Braun. Eva met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide;
1945 – In World War II, the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division. Prisoners at Dachau were used as forced laborers, initially in the construction and expansion of the camp and later for German armaments production. The camp served as the training center for SS concentration camp guards and was a model for other Nazi concentration camps. Dachau was also the first Nazi camp to use prisoners as human guinea pigs in medical experiments. As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp. In the course of Dachau’s history, at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp, and 90,000 through the subcamps. Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates perished at Dachau and its subcamps, but countless more were shipped to extermination camps elsewhere;
1946 – Following World War II, Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes. On the same day, another 28 former Japanese officials went on trial in Tokyo as war criminals; seven ended up being sentenced to death;
1950 – During the (first) Cold War, in response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States. Lattimore was cleared by a congressional investigation in 1950, but in 1951-1952 the attacks against the professor were renewed and he was charged with perjury in connection with his 1950 testimony. These charges were eventually dismissed, but not before Lattimore’s academic career in the United States had been destroyed;
1970 – In the Vietnam War, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival. However, the incursion gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point. News of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops and another at Jackson State in Mississippi that resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president;
1971 – During the Vietnam War, U.S. casualty figures for April 18 to April 24 are released. The 45 killed during that time brought total U.S. losses for the war to 45,019 since 1961. These figures made Southeast Asia fourth in total losses sustained by the U.S. during a war, topped only by the number of losses incurred during the Civil War, World War I and World War II;
1975 – At the end of the Vietnam War, Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession. With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Frequent Wind. In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the rook of the embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). THE VIETNAM WAR – WAS OVER!;
1991 – A devastating cyclone hits Bangladesh, killing more than 135,000 people. Even though there had been ample warning of the coming storm and shelter provisions had been built in the aftermath of a deadly 1970 storm, this disaster was one of the worst of the 20th century. “Cyclone” is the name given to hurricane-type storms that arise in the Indian Ocean. “Typhoons” are those that start in the Pacific Ocean and “hurricanes” are those found in the Atlantic. In 1970, nearly half a million people lost their lives to a powerful cyclone, prompting locals to build some storm shelters. However, not enough people took advantage of these havens before the 1991 storm. Seven of the nine most deadly cyclones or hurricanes of the 20th century took place in Bangladesh. The warning and shelter systems have improved since 1991;
1992 – A jury of 10 whites, one Hispanic, and one Filipina in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquits four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier. The announcement of the verdict, which enraged the black community, prompted widespread rioting throughout much of the sprawling city. It wasn’t until three days later that the arson and looting finally ended. The acquitted police officers were later convicted of violating Rodney King’s civil rights in a federal court trial. Reginald Denny’s attackers were identified through the helicopter videotape, arrested, and convicted of assault and battery. However, the jury declined to convict on attempted murder charges, apparently due to the defense’s argument that the defendants had only fallen prey to uncontrollable mob rage;
1993 – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II announced that for the first time, Buckingham Palace would be opened to tourists to help raise money for repairs at fire-damaged Windsor Castle;
2004 – The last Oldsmobile comes off the assembly line at the Lansing Car Assembly plant in Michigan, signaling the end of the 106-year-old automotive brand, America’s oldest. Factory workers signed the last Oldsmobile, an Alero sedan, before the vehicle was moved to Lansing’s R.E. Olds Transportation Museum, where it went on display. The last 500 Aleros ever manufactured featured “Final 500” emblems and were painted dark metallic cherry red. When the last Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line in April 2004, more than 35 million Oldsmobiles had been built during the brand’s lifetime. Along with Daimler and Peugeot, Oldsmobile was among the world’s oldest auto brands;
2004 – The National World War II Memorial opens in Washington, D.C., to thousands of visitors, providing overdue recognition for the 16 million U.S. men and women who served in the war. The memorial is located on 7.4 acres on the former site of the Rainbow Pool at the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The Capitol dome is seen to the east, and Arlington Cemetery is just across the Potomac River to the west. Though the federal government donated $16 million to the memorial fund, it took more than $164 million in private donations to get it built. Only a fraction of the 16 million Americans who served in the war would ever see it. Four million World War II veterans were living at the time, with more than 1,100 dying every day, according to government records;
2011 – Great Britain’s Prince William marries his longtime girlfriend Catherine Elizabeth “Kate” Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London. Some 1,900 guests attended the ceremony, while another 1 million spectators lined the streets of London and an estimated 2 billion people around the world watched on television. The 29-year-old bride and 28-year-old groom, second in line (behind his father) to the throne, met in 2001 as students at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. The couple, who once married became the duke and duchess of Cambridge, honeymooned in the Seychelles, before returning to Wales. On July 22, 2013, the duchess gave birth to the couple’s first child, George, who is third in line to the throne;
2013 – It was one year ago Today!
Today’s Word with Power
To close, as I
A thought
Beyond what these words were first meant to convey, we know today that our Redeemer will return as the Rider on the white horse in triumph and victory. Hallelujah, what a day! Then the world truly WILL KNOW that Jesus Christ, our Savior and brother and friend, is Lord of all things!
Which leads me to a verse
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
– Job 29:25
That brings me to a prayer
My Conquering King and Immortal God, I look forward to the day of your ultimate triumph in our world. Until that day, I pray that your Kingdom may be reflected in my ministry, my family and my life. Through the Rider on the white horse, I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
