On this day in 1916, Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was able to go the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the federal Congress. Born and raised on a ranch near Missoula, Montana, Rankin was the daughter of progressive parents who encouraged her to think beyond the narrow sphere of opportunities generally permitted to women of the early 20th century.
After graduating from the University of Montana and the New York School of Philanthropy, Rankin worked briefly as a social worker before becoming active in the national effort to win women the vote. In 1914, her efforts brought her back to Montana, where she believed pioneer conditions had created greater respect for women’s work and abilities, making it somewhat easier to convince men to grant them the right to vote. Indeed, other western states like Wyoming and Colorado had already approved women’s suffrage years before, and Rankin’s leadership helped Montana join them in 1914.
With the vote for women secured, Rankin put Montana’s new political dynamics to the test. She ran for one of Montana’s two seats in Congress as a Progressive Republican in 1916. With strong support from women and men alike, Rankin became the first woman in history elected to that body. When she traveled to Washington, D.C., the next year, the eyes of the nation watched to see if a woman could handle the responsibilities of high office. Rankin soon proved she could, but she also demonstrated that she would not betray her own strongly held convictions for political expediency. A dedicated pacifist, Rankin’s first vote as a U.S. congresswoman was against U.S. entry into World War I. Many supported her courageous stand, though others claimed her vote showed that women were incapable of shouldering the difficult burdens of national leadership—despite the fact that 55 men had also voted against the war.
Rankin’s vote against WWI contributed to her defeat in her 1918 reelection bid. For the next 20 years, she continued to work for the cause of peace. Ironically, she again won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1940, just as the nation was about to enter World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Rankin became the only person in the history of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars. This time, though, the principled pacifist from Montana cast the only dissenting vote.
November 7, 1944, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected president of the United States for a fourth time, handily defeating his Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York, and becoming the first and only president in history to win a fourth term in office.
Roosevelt, a fifth cousin to former president Theodore Roosevelt, first came to the White House in 1933 with a promise to lead America out of the Great Depression. Aided by a Democratic Congress, Roosevelt took prompt action, and most of his “New Deal” proposals, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, and creation of the Public Works Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority, were approved within his first 100 days in office. Although criticized by many in the business community, Roosevelt’s progressive legislation improved America’s economic climate, and in 1936 he easily won reelection.
FDR never let his handicaps stop him. In 1921, at the age of 29, he had been attacked by polio and thereafter was burdened with leg braces. Later, he was confined to a wheelchair. America voters at that time weren’t stopped by Roosevelt’s handicaps either. Although criticized by many in the business community, Roosevelt’s progressive legislation improved America’s economic climate, and in 1936 he easily won reelection.
From the time Roosevelt was first elected to the presidency in 1932 until mid-1945, when he died in office, Roosevelt presided over two of the biggest crises in U.S. history: the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. Although he initially tried to avoid direct U.S. involvement in World War II, which began in 1939, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in on December 7, 1941, thrust American headlong into the conflict.
By the time Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term, and Allied victory over Germany Germany was all but certain, though Japan still held on tenaciously. At the same time, FDR’s health was now seriously failing. Many historians say that Roosevelt was far too sick to have represented America well at the Yalta conference when so much power over nations was given to Joseph Stalin.
Three months after his inauguration, while resting at his retreat at Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. Following a solemn parade of his coffin through the streets of the nation’s capital, his body was buried in a family plot in Hyde Park, New York.
In 1947, with President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s vice president, in office, Congress proposed a law that would limit presidents to two consecutive terms. Up to that time, presidents had either voluntarily followed George Washington’s example of serving a maximum of two terms, or were unsuccessful in winning a third. (In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt did run for a third non-consecutive term, but lost.) In 1951, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was passed, officially limiting a president’s tenure in office to two terms of four years each.
November 7, 1989
Two African American firsts in politics
In New York, former Manhattan borough president David Dinkins, a Democrat, was elected New York City’s first African American mayor, while in Virginia, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, also a Democrat, became the first elected African American state governor in American history.
Although Wilder was the first African American to be popularly elected to the governor’s post, he was not the first African American to hold that office. That distinction goes to Pinkney Benton Stewart Pinchback, a Reconstruction-era lieutenant general of Louisiana who became Louisiana state governor in December 1872. Pinchback served as acting governor for five weeks while impeachment proceedings were in progress against Governor Henry Clay Warmoth.
Wilder served as Virginia governor until 1993, whereupon he was forced to step down because Virginia law prohibits governors from serving two terms in succession. In 1993, Dinkins was defeated in his bid to win a second mayoral term by Republican challenger Rudolph Giuliani.
On November 7, 1972, Richard Milhouse Nixon defeated Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) and was re-elected President of the United States for a 2nd term.
With only 55 percent of the electorate voting, the lowest turnout since 1948, Nixon carried all states but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes. During the campaign, Nixon pledged to secure “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Aided by the potential for a peace agreement in the ongoing Paris negotiations and the upswing in the American economy, Nixon easily defeated McGovern, an outspoken peacenik whose party was divided over several issues, not the least of which was McGovern’s extreme views on the war. McGovern had said during the campaign, “If I were President, it would take me twenty-four hours and the stroke of a pen to terminate all military operations in Southeast Asia.” He said he would withdraw all American troops within 90 days of taking office, whether or not U.S. prisoners of war were released. To many Americans, including many Democrats, McGovern’s position was tantamount to total capitulation in Southeast Asia. Given this radical alternative, Nixon seemed a better choice to most voters.
In other races, the Democrats widened their majority in Congress, picking up two Senate seats. Almost unnoticed during the presidential campaign was the arrest of five men connected with Nixon’s re-election committee who had broken into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C. The Watergate scandal ultimately proved to be Nixon’s undoing, and he resigned the presidency as a result of it in August 1974.
This is Ray Mossholder from the headquarters of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas. And this is This Day in History – July 27
July 27, 1586 –Sir Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia. How many Europeans did he end up killing?
July 27, 1663 – The British Parliament passed a Navigation Act, which required all goods bound for the colonies be sent in British ships from British ports.
July 27, 1694 – The Bank of England was chartered.
July 27, 1789 – The Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the U.S. Congress. The agency later became known as the Department of State.
You may know of Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the West, but did you know that on July 27, 1806, Meriwether Lewis killed a Blackfoot Indian?
The voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the West began in May 1804 when the two captains and 27 men headed up the Missouri River. They reached the Pacific Ocean the following year, and on March 23, 1806, began the return journey. After crossing the worst section of the Rocky Mountains, the expedition split up. Clark took most of the men and explored the Yellowstone River country to the south. Lewis, with nine men, headed west to the Great Falls of the Missouri River where he split the small party still further. Six men remained behind to make the portage around the Great Falls. Lewis took the remaining three and headed north to explore the Marias River country of present-day northwestern Montana.
It was a risky, perhaps even irresponsible, decision. Lewis knew the Marias River country was the home of the Blackfoot Indians, one of the fiercest tribes of the Great Plains. Lewis hoped he could meet peacefully with the Blackfoot and encourage their cooperation with the United States. Yet, if they met a hostile Blackfoot band and a fight began, the four explorers would be badly outnumbered.
On July 26, Lewis encountered a party of eight young Blackfoot braves. At first, the meeting went well, and the Indians seemed pleased with Lewis’ gifts of a medal, flag, and handkerchief. Lulled into a false sense of security, Lewis invited the Indians to camp with them. In the early morning of this day in 1806, Lewis awoke to the shouts of one his men–the Indians were attempting to steal their rifles and horses.
Lewis sped after two Indians who were running off with several of the horses, calling out for them to stop or he would shoot. One Indian, armed with an old British musket, turned toward Lewis. Apparently fearing that the Indian was about to shoot, Lewis fired first and hit him in the stomach. The Indians retreated, and the men quickly gathered their horses. Lewis then learned that one of his men had also fatally stabbed another of the Blackfoot.
Fearing the survivors would soon return with reinforcements, Lewis and his men immediately broke camp. They rode south quickly and managed to escape any retribution from the Blackfoot. Lewis’ diplomatic mission, however, had turned into a debacle. By killing at least one Indian, and probably two, Lewis had guaranteed that the already hostile Blackfoot would be unlikely to deal peacefully with Americans in the future.
July 27, 1804 – The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. With the amendment Electors were directed to vote for a President and for a Vice-President rather than for two choices for President.
July 27, 1836 – The beautiful city of Adelaide, Australia was founded
July 27, 1837- A United States Mint is opened in Charlotte, North Carolina that only handled gold from the California gold rush.
July 27, 1866 – Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid (1,686 miles long)
July 27, 1898 – the first story about Sherlock Holmes “The Adventure of The Dancing Men” was released.
July 27, 1921, at the University of Toronto, Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin–a hormone they believe could prevent diabetes–for the first time. Within a year, the first human sufferers of diabetes were receiving insulin treatments, and countless lives were saved from what was previously regarded as a fatal disease.
Diabetes has been recognized as a distinct medical condition for more than 3,000 years, but its exact cause was a mystery until the 20th century. By the early 1920s, many researchers strongly suspected that diabetes was caused by a malfunction in the digestive system related to the pancreas gland, a small organ that sits on top of the liver. At that time, the only way to treat the fatal disease was through a diet low in carbohydrates and sugar and high in fat and protein. Instead of dying shortly after diagnosis, this diet allowed diabetics to live–for about a year.
A breakthrough came at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921, when Canadians Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin from canine test subjects, produced diabetic symptoms in the animals, and then began a program of insulin injections that returned the dogs to normalcy. On November 14, the discovery was announced to the world.
Two months later, with the support of J.J.R. MacLeod of the University of Toronto, the two scientists began preparations for an insulin treatment of a human subject. Enlisting the aid of biochemist J.B. Collip, they were able to extract a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreases of cattle from slaughterhouses. On January 23, 1921, they began treating 14-year-old Leonard Thompson with insulin injections. The diabetic teenager improved dramatically, and the University of Toronto immediately gave pharmaceutical companies license to produce insulin, free of royalties. By 1923, insulin had become widely available, and Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine.
July 27, 1866 – Cyrus Field successfully completed the Atlantic Cable. It was an underwater telegraph from North America to Europe.
July 27, 1906 Leo Durocher is born. He will grow up to be the much loved baseball manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.
July 27, 1909 – Orville Wright set a record for the longest airplane flight. He was testing the first Army airplane and kept it in the air for 1 hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds.
July 27, 1940 – “What’s up, Doc?” Bugs Bunny made his debut in the cartoon A Wild Hare.
World War II is raging as on July 27, 1941, Japanese forces land in Indo-China
On July 27, 1943, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, issued Order No. 227, what came to be known as the “Not one step backward” order, in light of German advances into Russian territory. The order declared, “Panic makers and cowards must be liquidated on the spot. Not one step backward without orders from higher headquarters! Commanders…who abandon a position without an order from higher headquarters are traitors to the Fatherland.”
Early German successes against Russia had emboldened Hitler in his goal of taking Leningrad and Stalingrad. But the German attack on Stalingrad, thought foolhardy by Hitler’s generals, because of Russia’s superior manpower and the enormous drain on German resources and troop strength, was repulsed by a fierce Soviet fighting force, which had been reinforced with greater numbers of men and materials.
The Germans then turned their sights on Leningrad. Stalin needed to “motivate” both officers and civilians alike in their defense of Leningrad—hence, Order No. 227. But it was hardly necessary. On the same day the order was given, Russian peasants and partisans in the Leningrad region killed a German official, Adolf Beck, whose job was to send agricultural products from occupied Russia to Germany or German troops. The Russian patriots also set fire to the granaries and barns in which the stash of agricultural products was stored before transport. A partisan pamphlet issued an order of its own: “Russians! Destroy the German landowners. Drive the Germans from the land of the Soviets!”
Two major events happen on the same day on July 27, 1944:
The United States regains possession of Guam from the Japanese
and the 1st British jet fighter used in combat – Gloster Meteor – entered the war.
July 27, 1949, the world’s first jet-propelled airliner, the British De Havilland Comet, made its maiden test-flight in England. The jet engine would ultimately revolutionize the airline industry, shrinking air travel time in half by enabling planes to climb faster and fly higher.
The Comet was the creation of English aircraft designer and aviation pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1882-1965). De Havilland started out designing motorcycles and buses, but after seeing Wilbur Wright demonstrate an airplane in 1908, he decided to build one of his own.
The Wright brothers had made their famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. De Havilland successfully designed and piloted his first plane in 1910 and went on to work for English aircraft manufacturers before starting his own company in 1920. De Havilland Aircraft Company became a leader in the aviation industry, known for developing lighter engines and faster, more streamlined planes.
In 1939, an experimental jet-powered plane debuted in Germany. During World War II, Germany was the first country to use jet fighters. De Havilland also designed fighter planes during the war years. He was knighted for his contributions to aviation in 1944.
Following the war, De Havilland turned his focus to commercial jets, developing the Comet and the Ghost jet engine. After its July 1949 test flight, the Comet underwent three more years of testing and training flights. Then, on May 2, 1952, the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) began the world’s first commercial jet service with the 44-seat Comet 1A, flying paying passengers from London to Johannesburg.
The Comet was capable of traveling 480 miles per hour, a record speed at the time. However, the initial commercial service was short-lived, and due to a series of fatal crashes in 1953 and 1954, the entire fleet was grounded.
Investigators eventually determined that the planes had experienced metal fatigue resulting from the need to repeatedly pressurize and depressurize. Four years later, De Havilland debuted an improved and recertified Comet, but in the meantime, American airline manufacturers Boeing and Douglas had each introduced faster, more efficient jets of their own and became the dominant forces in the industry. By the early 1980s, most Comets used by commercial airlines had been taken out of service.
It was on July 27, 1953, after three years of a bloody and frustrating war, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea agree to an armistice, bringing the Korean War to an end. The armistice ended America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war.”
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when communist North Korea invaded South Korea. Almost immediately, the United States secured a resolution from the United Nations calling for the military defense of South Korea against the North Korean aggression. In a matter of days, U.S. land, air, and sea forces had joined the battle. The U.S. intervention turned the tide of the war, and soon the U.S. and South Korean forces were pushing into North Korea and toward that nation’s border with China.
In November and December 1951, hundreds of thousands of troops from the People’s Republic of China began heavy assaults against the American and South Korea forces.
In the U.S. presidential election of 1952, Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower strongly criticized President Harry S. Truman’s handling of the war. After his victory, Eisenhower adhered to his promise to “go to Korea.” His trip convinced him that something new was needed to break the diplomatic logjam at the peace talks that had begun in July 1951. Eisenhower began to publicly hint that the United States might make use of its nuclear arsenal to break the military stalemate in Korea. He allowed the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan to begin harassing air raids on mainland China. The president also put pressure on his South Korean ally to drop some of its demands in order to speed the peace process.
Whether or not Eisenhower’s threats of nuclear attacks helped, by July 1953 all sides involved in the conflict were ready to sign an agreement ending the bloodshed. The armistice, signed on July 27, established a committee of representatives from neutral countries to decide the fate of the thousands of prisoners of war on both sides. It was eventually decided that the POWs could choose their own fate–stay where they were or return to their homelands.
A new border between North and South Korea was drawn, which gave South Korea some additional territory and demilitarized the zone between the two nations.
The war cost the lives of millions of Koreans and Chinese, as well as over 50,000 Americans. It had been a frustrating war for Americans, who were used to forcing the unconditional surrender of their enemies. Many also could not understand why the United States had not expanded the war into China or used its nuclear arsenal. As government officials were well aware, however, such actions would likely have prompted World War III.
July 27, 1960 – Vice President Nixon was nominated for president on the first round of voting at the Republican convention in Chicago.
On this day in 1962 NASA launched Mariner 2 on a flyby mission to Venus
That’s the same day Martin Luther King Jr. was locked in jail in Albany, Georgia
On July 27, 1964, it is announced that the United States will send an additional 5,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam, bringing the total number of U.S. forces in Vietnam to 21,000. Military spokesmen and Washington officials insisted that this did not represent any change in policy, and that new troops would only intensify existing U.S. efforts. However, the situation changed in August 1964 when North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers off the coast of North Vietnam. What became known as the Tonkin Gulf incident led to the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which passed unanimously in the House and 88 to 2 in the Senate. The resolution gave the president approval to “take all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Using the resolution, Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in retaliation for the Tonkin Gulf incident.
In 1965, Johnson was faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation in Vietnam. The Viet Cong had increased the level of combat and there were indications that Hanoi was sending troops to fight in the south. It was apparent that the South Vietnamese were in danger of being overwhelmed. Johnson had sent Marines and paratroopers to protect American installations, but he had become convinced that more had to be done to stop the communists or they would soon overwhelm South Vietnam. While some advisers, such as Undersecretary of State George Ball, recommended a negotiated settlement, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara urged the president to “expand promptly and substantially” the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam. Johnson, not wanting to “lose” Vietnam to the communists, ultimately accepted McNamara’s recommendation. This decision led to a massive escalation of the war.
1965 U.S. jets attack new North Vietnamese air defense sites
July 27, 1965, forty-six U.S. F-105 fighter-bombers attack the missile installation that had fired at U.S. planes on July 24. They also attacked another missile installation 40 miles northwest of Hanoi. One missile launcher was destroyed and another was damaged, but five U.S. planes were shot down in the effort.
On July 24, U.S. bombers on a raid over munitions manufacturing facilities at Kang Chi, 55 miles northwest of Hanoi, were fired at from an unknown launching site. It was the first time the enemy had launched antiaircraft missiles at U.S. aircraft. The presence of ground-to-air antiaircraft missiles represented a rapidly improving air defense capability for the North Vietnamese. As the war progressed, North Vietnam, supplied by China and the Soviet Union, would fashion a very effective and integrated air defense system, which became a formidable challenge to American flyers conducting missions over North Vietnam.
On this day in 1974, the House of Representatives charges President Richard M. Nixon with the first of three articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice after he refused to release White House tape recordings that contained crucial information regarding the Watergate scandal.
In June 1972, five men connected with Nixon’s reelection committee, the 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 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.
In May 1973, the Senate convened an investigation into the Watergate scandal amid public cries for Nixon’s impeachment. Nixon vigorously denied involvement in the burglary cover-up, most famously in November 1973 when he declared, “I am not a crook.” Although Nixon released some of the tapes requested by the Senate in April 1974, he withheld the most damning of them, claiming executive privilege. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and ordered him to turn over the remaining tapes. When he refused to do so, the House of Representatives passed the first article of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice. On August 5, with the impeachment process already underway, Nixon reluctantly released the remaining tapes.
On August 8, 1974, Nixon avoided a Senate trial and likely conviction by becoming the first president to resign. Only two other presidents in U.S. history have been impeached, but didn’t resign. All Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.
July 27, 1973 – Walter Blum becomes the 6th jockey in history to ride 4,000 winners
July 27, 1980, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the former shah of Iran, died of cancer while in exile in Egypt.
Mohammad Reza was enthroned as shah of Iran in 1941, after his father was forced to abdicate by British and Soviet troops. The new shah promised to act as a constitutional monarch but often meddled in the elected government’s affairs. After a communist plot against him was thwarted in 1949, he took on even more powers. However, in the early 1950s, the shah was eclipsed by Mohammad Mosaddeq, a zealous Iranian nationalist who convinced the Parliament to nationalize Britain’s extensive oil interests in Iran. Mohammad Reza, who maintained close relations with Britain and the United States, opposed the decision. Nevertheless, he was forced in 1951 to appoint Mosaddeq premier, and two years of tension followed.
In August 1953, Mohammad Reza attempted to dismiss Mosaddeq, but the premier’s popular support was so great that the shah himself was forced out of Iran. A few days later, British and U.S. intelligence agents orchestrated a stunning coup d’etat against Mosaddeq, and the shah returned to take power as the sole leader of Iran. He repealed Mosaddeq’s legislation and became a close Cold War ally of the United States in the Middle East.
In 1963, the shah launched his “White Revolution,” a broad government program that included land reform, infrastructure development, voting rights for women, and the reduction of illiteracy. Although these programs were applauded by many in Iran, Islamic leaders were critical of what they saw as the westernization of Iran. Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiite cleric, was particularly vocal in his criticism and called for the overthrow of the shah and the establishment of an Islamic state. In 1964, Khomeini was exiled and settled across the border in Iraq, where he sent radio messages to incite his supporters.
The shah saw himself foremost as a Persian king and in 1971 held an extravagant celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the pre-Islamic Persian monarchy. In 1976, he formally replaced the Islamic calendar with a Persian calendar. Religious discontent grew, and the shah became more repressive, using his brutal secret police force to suppress opposition. This alienated students and intellectuals in Iran, and support for the exiled Khomeini increased. Discontent was also rampant in the poor and middle classes, who felt that the economic developments of the White Revolution had only benefited the ruling elite. In 1978, anti-shah demonstrations broke out in Iran’s major cities.
On September 8, 1978, the shah’s security force fired on a large group of demonstrators, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. Two months later, thousands took to the streets of Tehran, rioting and destroying symbols of westernization, such as banks and liquor stores. Khomeini called for the shah’s immediate overthrow, and on December 11 a group of soldiers mutinied and attacked the shah’s security officers. His regime collapsed, and on January 16, 1979, he fled the country. Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned after 15 years of exile and took control of Iran.
The shah traveled to several countries before entering the United States in October 1979 for medical treatment of his cancer. In Tehran, Islamic militants responded on November 4 by storming the U.S. embassy and taking the staff hostage. With the approval of Khomeini, the militants demanded the return of the shah to Iran to stand trial for his crimes. The United States refused to negotiate, and 52 American hostages were held for 444 days. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi died in Egypt in July 1980.
July 27 was a tragic day in 1981 when Adam John Walsh, age six, was abducted from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, and later found murdered. In the aftermath of the crime, Adam’s father, John Walsh, became a leading victims’ rights activist and host of the long-running television show America’s Most Wanted.
Early in the afternoon on July 27, Adam entered a Sears department store with his mother, Reve. She allowed him to watch a group of older boys play video games in the toy department while she shopped nearby. When she returned for him less than 10 minutes later, he was gone. Investigators learned a teenage security guard had asked the older children to leave because they were causing trouble. Adam, reportedly a timid child who might have been afraid to speak up, followed one of the older boys out and didn’t tell the guard his mother was in the store. He was likely kidnapped outside the store after the other child left. Adam’s parents launched a massive hunt for their son; however, on August 10, 1981, his severed head was discovered by two fishermen in a drainage canal in Vero Beach, Florida, some 100 miles from Hollywood. His body was never found.
In October 1983, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam’s abduction and murder and also implicated serial killer Henry Lee Lucas in the crime. However, investigators soon discovered that Lucas couldn’t have been involved because he was in jail in Virginia when Adam was kidnapped. Toole then admitted he had carried out the crime on his own and police announced they had found Adam’s killer. However, investigators were unable to locate Adam’s body where Toole claimed to have buried it and without any physical evidence the Florida state attorney couldn’t prosecute the case.
Several months later, Toole recanted his confession. In the years that followed, Toole repeatedly confessed to killing Adam Walsh and then took back his story. He died of cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS in 1996 in a Florida prison, where he was on Death Row for another murder. Years later, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was living in Florida at the time of Adam’s abduction, was considered a possible suspect in the case. Dahmer died in a Wisconsin prison in 1994. On December 16, 2008, the police department in Hollywood, Florida, announced that the case against Toole was strong enough to close the investigation into Adam’s death.
John Walsh channeled his grief into advocacy work for crime victims. He was a founder in 1984 of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and in 1988 he became host of America’s Most Wanted, a show that has since helped law enforcement officials track down hundreds of fugitives. On July 27, 2006, 25 years after Adam went missing, President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act into law, which created a national database of convicted child sex offenders, strengthened federal penalties for crimes against children and provided funding and training for law enforcement to fight crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children via the Internet.
1989 Atlanta Brave Dale Murphy is the 10th to get 6 RBIs in one inning. The 6th inning to be exact.
On July 27, 1990, the last Citroen 2CV, known as the “Tin Snail” for its distinctive shape, rolls off the production line at the company’s plant in Mangualde, Portugal at four o’clock on the afternoon of July 27, 1990. Since its debut in 1948, a total of 5,114,959 2CVs had been produced worldwide.
The French engineer and industrialist Andre Citroen converted his munitions plant into an automobile company after World War I; beginning in 1919, it was the first automaker to mass-produce cars outside of the United States.
As in Germany (the Volkswagen Beetle), Italy (the Fiat 500) and Britain (Austin Mini), the rise of mass car ownership in France in the 1930s led to a demand for a light, economical “people’s car,” which Citroen answered in the post-World War II years with the 2CV. The company actually began testing the 2CV before the war but kept the project under wraps when war broke out; the original production model was only discovered by chance in the late 1960s. When Citroen finally unveiled the car at the 1948 Paris Motor Show, it was an immediate success: At one point, the waiting time to buy one was five years.
The 2CV (“Deux Chevaux Vapeur” in French, or “two steam horses,” a reference to France’s policy of taxing cars based on their engine output) was a trailblazer among other small cars of its era. Its innovations included a sophisticated suspension system, front-wheel drive, inboard front brakes, a lightweight, air-cooled engine and a four-speed manual transmission.
Its front and rear wings, doors, bonnet, fabric sunroof and trunk lid were all detachable. The 2CV’s endearingly unfashionable form joined the Eiffel Tower as a quintessential symbol of France in popular culture. Citroen released a 2CV van in 1951 and a luxury version, the 2CV AZL, in 1956. New models came out over the years, including the 2CV4 and 2CV 6, capable of reaching speeds above 100 kilometers per hour, in 1970; and the popular “Charleston” model in 1981. That same year, Roger Moore–playing the superspy James Bond in “For Your Eyes Only”–drove a bright yellow, high-performance version of the 2CV, evading his pursuers (in Peugeots) in the requisite Bond movie high-speed car chase.
By the late 1980s, however, consumers were no longer wild about the 2CV’s quirky, antiquated design. This fact, combined with poor performance according to crash-testing and anti-pollution standards, led to the Tin Snail’s demise. In 1988, production moved from France to Portugal, and the last 2CV was produced two years later.
On that same day in 1990 Zsa Zsa Gabor began a 3 day jail sentence for slapping a cop
Fifteen years and five #1 hits after breaking into the music industry by working in a style completely different from her famous father’s, Natalie Cole stopped distancing herself from Nat King Cole’s musical legacy and instead embraced it, recording an entire album of standards from her father’s old repertoire. Though it exposed her to charges of exploiting his memory, it also gave Cole the biggest hit album of her professional career: Unforgettable: With Love, which climbed to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on July 27, 1991.
Natalie Cole was awarded the Grammy for Best New Artist of 1975 and won the award for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female, in both 1975 and 1976, ending a run of eight straight wins in that category by Aretha Franklin. A severe drug problem would plague Natalie Cole through the first phase of her professional career, even as she continued to turn out albums on a nearly annual basis. By the time she left her drug habit behind in the early 1980s, however, Cole’s popularity was a thing of the past.
Unforgettable: With Love marked a significant shift in both musical direction and career fortunes for Natalie Cole. The album comprised 22 songs from the Nat King Cole catalog, including solo performances of “Route 66,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Straighten Up And Fly Right” as well as a “duet” between Natalie and her father on his biggest hit of all, “Unforgettable.”
The skillful production work on “Unforgettable” may not have entirely removed the creepiness factor of a daughter singing with her dead father, but the song swept every eligible category in at the 1991 Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Performance. Its success on the radio also helped Unforgettable: With Love sell more than 8 million copies, win the Grammy for Album of the Year and, on this day in 1991, top the Billboard album charts.
On this day in 1993, Boston Celtics basketball legend Reggie Lewis collapsed after suffering cardiac arrest while shooting baskets at Brandeis University in Boston, Massachusetts. Two hours later, Lewis was pronounced dead at Waltham-Weston Hospital.
Reggie Lewis grew up shooting baskets every day in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Dunbar High School, where he played on one of the greatest high school basketball teams in history. The team went 31-0 and won the national championship in 1983 with four future NBA stars in the line-up: David Wingate, who went on to play for Georgetown and the New York Knicks; Reggie Williams, who starred as a guard at Georgetown before being drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers; Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, the 5-foot-3-inch standout point guard for Wake Forest and later the Washington Bullets and Charlotte Hornets; and Lewis. Lewis was the team’s sixth man and, coming out of Dunbar, was the least heralded of the four. He went on, however, to become the all-time leading scorer at Northeastern University in Boston, and was drafted by the Celtics in the first round of the 1987 NBA draft, the 22nd pick overall.
Lewis was beloved in Boston, where he developed a reputation as a humanitarian and positive role model and had the brightest NBA career of any of the Dunbar boys. In his second year with the Celtics, a team that featured future Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, Lewis scored 18.5 points per game. By 1991-92, still playing alongside the Celtic legends, he upped his average to 20.8 points per game and led the Celtics in scoring. Bird then retired, and Lewis became the team’s star, again averaging 20.8 points per game.
To the dismay of fans and teammates, Lewis collapsed on the court during the Celtics’ first game of the 1993 playoffs against the Charlotte Hornets and did not return to the game. A skilled team of cardiologists soon diagnosed him with a dangerous form of cardiac arrhythmia that they said had led to severe heart damage and advised him to end his basketball career. Frustrated, Lewis hired his own doctors, who assured him, incorrectly it turned out, that he could continue to play. At the time of his death, Lewis was planning to rejoin the Celtics for the upcoming 1993-94 season.
Red Auerbach, general manager of the Celtics, was said to be devastated by the death of his young star. “This was the damndest shame you ever heard of. This is a wonderful kid. My heart is broken.” The Celtics retired Lewis’ No. 35 jersey in March 1995. In the wake of Lewis’ death, his widow, Donna Harris-Lewis, began the Reggie Lewis Foundation to continue his charitable efforts in the Boston community, including an annual turkey giveaway at Thanksgiving.
1996 Bombing at Centennial Olympic Park
This day in 1996 – In Atlanta, Georgia, the XXVI Summer Olympiad is disrupted by the explosion of a nail-laden pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park. The bombing, which occurred during a free concert, killed a mother who had brought her daughter to hear the rock music and injured more than 100 others, including a Turkish cameraman who suffered a fatal heart attack after the blast.
Police were warned of the bombing in advance, but the bomb exploded before the anonymous caller said it would, leading authorities to suspect that the law enforcement officers who descended on the park were indirectly targeted. Within a few days, Richard Jewell, a security guard at the concert, was charged with the crime. However, evidence against him was dubious at best, and in October he was fully cleared of all responsibility in the bombing.
On January 16, 1997, another bomb exploded outside an abortion clinic in suburban Atlanta, blowing a hole in the building’s wall. An hour later, while police and ambulance workers were still at the scene, a second blast went off near a large trash bin, injuring seven people. As at Centennial Park, a nail-laden bomb was used and authorities were targeted. Then, only five days later, also in Atlanta, a nail-laden bomb exploded near the patio area of a crowded gay and lesbian nightclub, injuring five people. A second bomb in a backpack was found outside after the first explosion, but police safely detonated it. Federal investigators linked the bombings, but no suspect was arrested.
On January 29, 1998, an abortion clinic was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, killing an off-duty police officer and critically wounding a nurse. An automobile reported at the crime scene was later found abandoned near the Georgia state line, and investigators traced it to Eric Robert Rudolph, a 31-year-old carpenter. Although Rudolph was not immediately found, authorities positively identified him as the culprit in the Birmingham and Atlanta bombings, and an extensive manhunt began.
Despite being one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, Rudolph eluded the authorities for five years by hiding in the mountains in western North Carolina before finally being captured on May 31, 2003. As part of a plea agreement that helped him avoid a death sentence, Rudolph pled guilty to all three bombings, as well as the 1998 murder of a police officer, and was sentenced on July 18, 2005 to four consecutive life terms.
During an air show in Ukraine on July 27, 2002, a fighter jet crashed into a crowd of spectators killing 85 people and injuring hundreds more. This was the worst air-show accident to that date.
Thousands of spectators, including many children, were enjoying themselves on a summer Saturday afternoon at the Skniliv Airfield in Lviv. They came to mark the 60th anniversary of the formation of a local unit of the Ukrainian air force. A Russian Sukhoi SU-27 jet was performing a complicated maneuver just above the ground when it nicked a plane on the tarmac. The jet somersaulted and crashed directly into the crowd. The fiery explosion created a horrific scene. The two pilots, however, managed to eject themselves from the plane before the crash and survived with minor injuries.
The president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, immediately fired the head of the air force, began an investigation into the incident and vowed to end all future air shows. Millions of dollars were set aside to assist the victims and their families. The investigation quickly revealed that the pilots were attempting risky maneuvers that had never before been tried. In addition, there were no safety precautions in place to help the pilots direct the planes away from the crowd below in the event of an emergency.
The previous worst air-show disaster was at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, where three Italian jets collided and one crashed into the crowd. Seventy people were killed in that disaster.
2003 Bob Hope dies at 100
On this day in 2003, the legendary actor-comedian Bob Hope died at the age of 100 in Toluca Lake, California. Known for entertaining American servicemen and women for more than five decades, Hope had a career that spanned the whole range of 20th century entertainment, from vaudeville to Broadway musicals to radio, television and movies.
He was born Leslie Townes Hope, the fifth of seven sons, on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England. In 1907, Hope’s family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he began his entertainment career as a dancer and vaudeville performer. During the 1930s, he appeared in Broadway musicals, along with such performers as Fanny Brice and Ethel Merman. In 1934, Hope wed the nightclub singer Dolores Reade; the marriage would endure until his death. In 1938, Hope, who became known for his snappy one-liners, rose to national fame with his own radio show on NBC and his first feature film, The Big Broadcast of 1938.
In 1940, Hope co-starred in the box-office hit Road to Singapore with Bing Crosby. The film, about a pair of singing, wisecracking con men, was the first of seven “Road” movies the pair would make. Hope appeared in more than 50 feature films during his career. He hosted the Academy Awards 18 times, although he never won an Oscar himself, an occurrence he turned into a long-running joke. However, he did receive five special awards from the Academy, including two honorary Oscars. Hope was also a top entertainer on TV and from 1959 to 1996 he made 284 “Bob Hope specials” for NBC.
Starting with World War II, Hope began entertaining American troops at military bases around the world. His USO tours traveled to military bases during times of war (Vietnam, the Persian Gulf), as well as times of peace. He was so beloved for his work with the military for more than half a century that Congress passed a resolution in 1997 making Hope an honorary veteran. It was one of the countless honors that Hope received throughout his career. In 1998, he was granted honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.
And finally today July 27, 2015,
NEW YORK (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons.
The new policy, aimed at easing a controversy that has embroiled the Boy Scouts for years, takes effect immediately. It was approved by the BSA’s National Executive Board on a 45-12 vote during a closed-to-the-media teleconference.
“For far too long this issue has divided and distracted us,” said the BSA’s president, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “Now it’s time to unite behind our shared belief in the extraordinary power of Scouting to be a force for good.”
Initial reactions to the decision from groups on both sides suggested the issue would remain divisive.
The Mormon church, which sponsors more Scout units that any other organization, said it was “deeply troubled” by the decision. Church officials suggested they would look into the possibility of forming their own organization to replace Boy Scouts.
“The admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America,” said a statement from Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City.
In contrast, the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT-rights organization, said the Boy Scouts should not allow church-sponsored units to continue excluding gays.
“Discrimination should have no place in the Boy Scouts, period,” said the HRC’s president, Chad Griffin. “BSA officials should now demonstrate true leadership and begin the process of considering a full national policy of inclusion.”
Gates foreshadowed Monday’s action on May 21, when he told the Scouts’ national meeting that the long-standing ban on participation by openly gay adults was no longer sustainable. He said the ban was likely to be the target of lawsuits that the Scouts likely would lose.
Two weeks ago, the new policy was approved unanimously by the BSA’s 17-member National Executive Committee. It would allow local Scout units to select adult leaders without regard to sexual orientation — a stance that several Scout councils have already adopted in defiance of the official national policy.
In this May 23, 2014, file photo, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates addresses the Boy Scout leaders
In 2013, after heated internal debate, the BSA decided to allow openly gay youth as scouts, but not gay adults as leaders. Several denominations that collectively sponsor close to half of all Scout units — including the Roman Catholic church, the Mormon church and the Southern Baptist Convention — have been apprehensive about ending the ban on gay adults.
The BSA’s top leaders pledged to defend the right of any church-sponsored units to continue excluding gays as adult volunteers. But that assurance has not satisfied some conservative church leaders.
“In recent years I have seen a definite cooling on the part of Baptist churches toward the Scouts,” said the Rev. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “This will probably bring that cooling to a freeze.”
A more nuanced response came from the National Catholic Committee on Scouting, which expressed interest in maintaining its ties with the BSA, but also voiced concerns. Notably, it conveyed a reluctance to accept participation by anyone who engaged in sexual conduct outside of a heterosexual marriage.
Under the BSA’s new policy, gay leaders who were previously removed from Scouting because of the ban would have the opportunity to reapply for volunteer positions. If otherwise qualified, a gay adult would be eligible to serve as a Scoutmaster or unit leader.
Gates, who became the BSA’s president in May 2014, said at the time that he personally would have favored ending the ban on gay adults, but he opposed any further debate after the Scouts’ policymaking body upheld the ban. In May, he said that recent events “have confronted us with urgent challenges I did not foresee and which we cannot ignore.”
He cited an announcement by the BSA’s New York City chapter in early April that it had hired Pascal Tessier, the nation’s first openly gay Eagle Scout, as a summer camp leader. Gates also cited broader gay-rights developments and warned that rigidly maintaining the ban “will be the end of us as a national movement.”
The BSA’s right to exclude gays was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. But since then, the policy has prompted numerous major corporations to suspend charitable donations to the Scouts and strained relations with some municipalities.
More recently, the BSA faced a civil rights investigation in New York and lawsuits in other states over the ban.
Kenneth Upton, a lawyer for the LGBT-rights group Lambda Legal, questioned whether the BSA’s new policy to let church-sponsored units continue to exclude gay adults would be sustainable.
“There will be a period of time where they’ll have some legal protection,” Upton said. “But that doesn’t mean the lawsuits won’t keep coming. … They will become increasingly marginalized from the direction society is going.”
Like several other major youth organizations, the Boy Scouts have experienced a membership decline in recent decades. Current membership, according to the BSA, is about 2.4 million boys and about 1 million adults.
After the 2013 decision to admit gay youth, some conservatives split from the BSA to form a new group, Trail Life USA, which has created its own ranks, badges and uniforms. The group claims a membership of more than 25,000 youths and adults.
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When Richard Milhouse Nixon was President of the United States, people either loved him or hated him, but few Americans were neutral. Here is his entire story done in three segments. You don’t have to watch any more than you would want to watch at any given time, but you can keep coming back to it if you’re really interested. Richard Nixon was the first president to resign from office before his second term expired. Tears and jeers met his announcement of failure that would cause impeachment. What did Nixon accomplish while he was in office? Watch this film and you’ll know.
From the headquarters of reachmorenow.com in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is the news………
Before I actually begin sharing the news today, I want to begin by thanking you for your comments at the end of my newscasts. Several of you have said that I sound like a man who I will forever admire. I couldn’t have a more profound compliment them to be compared with the one and only Paul Harvey.
The truth is, when I began doing the news as the news director of KEAR–FM in San Francisco in late 1966, I had never heard Paul Harvey and his news style of delivery. But immediately people were writing in to say that I sounded very much like him. In fact, when I later did happen across his remarkable program, I not only became an instant fan, but I recognized that this giant of delivery did sound somewhat like me, only he was far far better at it than I have ever been.
You might say that as I kept listening to his broadcasts, he was my mentor, though we never met. I think it must be because he has been gone from this planet for many years, you’ve forgotten exactly how they sounded hello America hello world and I’ve come along to remind you of him. Thanks again.
Well, the truth is finally out about the Ebola virus and it isn’t pretty. If you’re an American who has thought Ebola was limited to West Africa, it isn’t. I will try to break this to you gently but I want to be thorough so that you know what is really happening.
Ebola is a virus that kills over half of the people infected, and a disease with no known cure. The virus is rapidly spreading in West Africa. Nigeria is the latest to feel it’s wrath, and Saudi Arabia too. Doctors Without Borders says the virus is completely out of control. More than one hundred health workers have now died while treating the disease in others. That’s in spite of the fact that health workers are now using every precaution, including what they wear when treating patients, and still they die.
Right now the Ebola virus is killing half of those who receive it, but knowledgeable doctors regarding this disease say that it could, in days to come, kill 90%. The Worldwide Health Organization has declared a worldwide crisis alert for Ebola virus.
Symptoms come on gradually. Anyone who carries the virus is almost always unaware of it for the first week to three weeks.
For the very first time, the Ebola virus has been brought – on purpose – to the United States and is no longer just a threat to West Africa. As journalist Paul Craig Roberts put it recently, “One cough, one sneeze, or one drop of saliva, and the virus is loose.”
There are other strains of Ebola. But the Ebola virus spreading now is one doctors have never seen before and have known nothing about.
The two Christian health workers who are now in Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after being flown from Liberia, have received an experimental drug called ZMAPP. So far Doctor Kent Brantly and Nancy Whitebol are continuing to show amazing signs of improvement after each of them have had four injections of this drug. But hardly any ZMAPP exists, and it will take several months before more is ready to be used. That is, if the drug companies are now willing to invest their money in creating it.
ZMAPP is made from genetically modified plants
President Obama signed an executive order Thursday that gives the federal government the power to take into custody any Americans that show any symptoms of “diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illnesses that are capable of being transmitted from one person to another, and that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.” So, for goodness sakes, don’t get a cold or you might be arrested!
Federal law already permits “the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease.” Achoo!
In spite of media attempts to play down the Ebola virus to keep Americans from fear until now, this virus carries such dangers that 20 quarantine centers across America are set up and prepared to potentially receive Ebola patients. One of these centers is located at the Los Angeles International Airport.
On Friday, New York City conducted the largest emergency drill in its history. The good news there is that the man in the hospital who had the Ebola virus has recovered and old symptoms are gone.
The federal government will begin testing an “experimental Ebola vaccine” on Americans in September.
If you are wondering why we don’t have an Ebola vaccine for a disease that could easily cause a worldwide plague, it’s because the pharmaceutical industry did not want to invest huge sums of money on a disease that “only affected people in Africa.”
Now at this point, I’m going to share with you some facts that already have gotten some conspiracy theorists going wild. You can check these facts out on the website Red Flag.
According to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone since the 1970s, researchers from Tulane University have been active for several years studying Ebola in nearly the exact spot where the very first Ebola virus broke out out this year. One of their stated purposes of this research was to study “The future use of fever–viruses as bio–weapons.”
Also since the 1970s, the Navy Times says the United States military has been interested in studying Ebola “as a potential biological weapon”
Now if you’re beginning to see why conspiracy theorists are sure they’re on to something, our government has asked the researchers from Tulane “to stop Ebola testing during the current Ebola outbreak.” Is it possible that researchers from Tulane somehow let the virus out that has begun killing people in many nations?
Navy officials tell us “Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates and it’s stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.”
Before this, I had thought only evil nations would try to use biological weapons. Syria has supposedly had to allow the United Nations to destroy all of its biological weapons because they were so dangerous. It’s a gruesome question – whether you would rather die in a split second from a nuclear bomb or linger in agony and slowly die of a biological disease while your family was dying of the same disease too? Man’s capacity for evil is not limited to other nations.
The U.S. Center For Disease Control actually owns a patent on a particular strain of Ebola known as “EBOBUN”. That isn’t the same strain of Ebola that has broken out now.
The CDC has raised America’s danger level in the highest degree possible. The CDC has just put up its own webpage called “Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations For Hospitalized Patients With Known or Suspected Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever In United States Hospitals.” And if you heard me say that once and can remember it, you should go on Jeopardy. You can replay this portion on your computer to get that title or just scroll down to it.
Here’s the most interesting point of all: The World Health Organization has launched a one hundred million dollar response plan to fight this Ebola outbreak. And you and I both know they would never do that unless they are extremely worried about the possibility of a worldwide Ebola epidemic like Smallpox that killed over three hundred million people in the 20th century and is returning now to our nation through our borders.
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The big bad Wolf told the three little piggies that he was going to “Huff and puff and blow their houses down.”
Hurricane Iselle was predicted to do the same thing on the big Island of Hawaii. It huffed and puffed while it was out at sea, but by the time it reached the Hawaiian shores it had turned into heavy wind and torrential rain they could handle.
Tropical storm Iselle’s eye was half blind by the time it struck about 5 miles from Pahala. At 2:30 a.m. EDT wins came on at 60 miles an hour and a tropical rainstorm with heavy downpour was all that was left. It knocked down some trees and did some damage to some roofs. The worst thing it is still doing is inundating the big Island with 5 to 8 inches of rain, with up to a foot of rain in some places. There is a flash flood warning continuing now. Two polling precincts had to stay closed on this day of primary elections. Roads were clogged in some places that totally stopped traffic from moving. But the aloha-welcoming Island has avoided what could easily have been great destruction. I’ll betcha a lot of Christians were praying.
Hurricane Julio – was headed as if by magnetic pull, dead center on Hilo, Hawaii, for many hours praying. The praying must have continued because Hurricane Julio has now my past not only Hilo, but the rest of all the Hawaiian Islands. Those are miracles my friends.
Hilo did get a 4.5 during the early morning hours yesterday. It rattled the people’s nerves more than items on shelves. No damage was reported. The people were out of bed early, stocking up on groceries and needed items that would last them longer than the hurricane that is now going to bypass them.
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An American, Alan Gross, has been rotting in a Cuban prison cell for five years. His lawyer, Scott Gilbert, says that the 65-year-old prisoner has totally given up. Gilbert told his wife and youngest daughter on their last visit to his cell, “life in a Cuban prison is not a life worth living.” He asked them not to visit him again, and told them “My 65th birthday” (which took place in May) “will be my last one in Havana one way or the other.”
Alan Gross before and after five years of prison in Cuba
Alan Gross, who lived in Maryland before his Cuban nightmare began, is Jewish. He was arrested in Cuba in 2009 for trying to set up Internet access for a small Jewish community in that communist country and sentenced to 15 years. He had come to Cuba to work as a subcontractor for the United States government’s US Agency for International Development, which promotes democracy in Cuba.
Since that time, Gross has undergone what his lawyer describes as “severe emotional deterioration.” His body is falling apart too. His hips are worn out and he has lost most of the vision in his right eye.
Gross was especially affected by the death of his mother in June. She was ninety-two. Until her death, she and her son Alan talked by phone regularly. That encouraged him. Her death brought Gross into deep despair. He asked the Cuban government to be allowed to return to the United States just for her funeral. His request was denied.
Judy Gross, Alan’s wife, told reporters she had never seen her husband so sick and broken. She wrote, “his decision to say goodbye was wrenching.”
Gross is also now refusing to see officials from the US Interest Sections in Havana, which Washington maintains instead of an embassy because the two countries have no formal diplomatic relationships.
Also on Monday, Gross’s lawyer released a letter that 300 rabbis had sent to President Obama, urging him to take action to secure Gross’s freedom to come home. But, as our president has already proven in regards to America’s Marine Sergeant hero Andrew Tahmooressie, who is locked tight in isolation in a Tijuana jail cell, President Obama does not like to make those kinds of phone calls.
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President Obama’s poll numbers have fallen to an all-time low. According to the reliable Gallup Poll, many of the people who voted for Obama because of his promise of “Change,” now wish they could change presidents instead of congressional members in 2014. 60% of Americans are unhappy with our Commander-In-Chief and feel that he has America going on the absolutely wrong track. 57% wish that Mitt Romney was president instead of Obama. They complain about his total lack of leadership both domestically – with his forever stall of creating many jobs by installing the Keystone Pipeline and many other drag-your–feet decisions that could strengthen our economy while he spends money as if it were confetti – and his utter lack of foreign policy and failure to have strategies that could save so many lives in places like Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, and so forth.
But President Obama might argue back “America said it wanted change. And I’m changing lots of things. If I did things like the other presidents did then it really wouldn’t be change, would it? It was George W. Bush, not me, who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. I got us out of Iraq. Bush was like Lyndon Johnson who ended up grieving over a war he couldn’t get out of. It was me who got us out of Iraq. ”
Of course, that argument would hold no water now with his order to have at least our Air Force fighting once again in Iraq. In all the years of his presidency since 2011 and all the months of 2014, President Obama continued to say America would never go back to Iraq. Of course, President Obama is also the one who told us: “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.”
No recent president has been involved in so many scandals with his administration that because of excuses rather than dealing with the problems, taints him too.
The hardest thing for America or an American president is when that president is no longer trusted. Fewer and fewer people any longer trust anything that Barack Obama says.
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Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned from being president of the United States. He was locked in one scandal he couldn’t overcome.
On June 17, 1972, five men under President Nixon’s directions, broke into the Watergate office complex in Washington DC, entered a large sum of money along with several other things. When the break-in began to be investigated by congressional order, Nixon denied knowing anything whatsoever about it. He continued that lie for many months. On top of that backspace, President Nixon began bugging the offices of political opponents and involved the FBI, the CIA, and the Internal Revenue Service to help cover up for him.
But all of this kept unraveling from the time the five burglars were quickly arrested. They still had money on them that they had taken from the Watergate office and easily traced. However, the smoking gun was 3700 hours of recorded tapes of every phone call in or out been involved the president. Had he destroyed those, he probably would’ve never been nailed. But it was a case of “Be sure your sins will find you out.” It was Nixon’s vanity that kept them from destroying the tapes which revealed him to all along have known and directed the Watergate break-in.
Only two presidents in history have ever been a candidate for president 5 times – President Nixon and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a five-time winner. Nixon won twice and came oh so close to defeating John Kennedy for a third win.
In November 1972, Nixon won the presidency in a landslide – winning 49 states, 60.7 percent of the popular vote, and 97% of the electoral college vote. How could a man so loved by America so quickly fall to such a place that he felt he had no choice but to resign?
I can point to achievement after achievement that Richard Nixon made while in office. But the truth is, with all his success and favor from the people of our country, Richard Nixon had a giant– sized ego. He also had the hawkish tendencies of the Bush father and son, the foul language of Lyndon Johnson, the dishonesty of Bill Clinton, and the arrogance of Barack Obama. But what sunk this man were recorded tapes that he had made that carried both heavy cursing and proved he had known about the Watergate Hotel robbery of Democratic campaign plans. Nixon’s character was absolutely destroyed in the hearts of Americans after those tapes were played. The keeping of those tapes had been totally foolhardy and they cost him his presidency.
Many still ask if Nixon should have resigned in light of the far more serious scandal of having President Bill Clinton boldface lying to America to cover up his adultery or the boldface lying to America by President Obama about Obamacare.
Forty years ago today, after his wife and daughters wept and pleaded with him to face impeachment because they knew in their hearts he could beat the rap, Nixon wrote and delivered to our nation one of the finest and classiest speeches any of our presidents have given.
Nixon began by talking about the disintegration of those who had been his greatest supporters, and with them gone he saw no reason to keep fighting his impeachment. Then he said “The interests of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.” His final words stunned whoever was listening, many weren’t, as he said to the nation that had voted him into office with a landslide:
“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed his abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.”
Many thought he wouldn’t resign. But the facts are, if he had stayed on, he would his investigation by Kennedy supporters who were even at that minute microscopically examining even his back taxes. Nixon knew that even if he had thrown away a new toothbrush at the age of ten, it would be used against him. Like a mouse in a rat trap, he had been caught guilty of Watergate and now every bit of his dirty laundry would be hung out for the world could see.
Doctor Billy Graham considered Richard Nixon a close friend and believes Nixon was terribly mistreated for what he did.
But out of all that came Richard Nixon’s top Special Counsel and Liaison Spokesman, a man named Chuck Colson, who received Christ in prison and came out to be one of the greatest Christian evangelists and role models of the twentieth century.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Humans remember a Christian’s sins. Christ doesn’t.
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