Tuesday is upon us already Yonkers at at 4:35 AM EDT you have a mostly cloudy sky, a temperature of 52 degrees with east winds at 1 mph, 72% humidity, the dew point is 43 degrees, the barometer is 29.9 inches and falling, and the visibility is 9 miles. Yonkers will be cloudy early and then off and on rain showers for the afternoon with thunder possible, a high of 66 degrees with light and variable winds. The chance of rain is 40%. Showers and thunderstorms are likely tonight, a low of 53 degrees with north-east winds at 5 to 10 mph.There is a 70% chance of rain. Sun-up occurs at 7:14 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 6:05 PM. You’ll have 10 hours and 51 minutes of available daylight. Biddle, Powder River County, Montana, Population: 61. AT 2:44 AM MDT Biddle is clear and 51 to 63 degrees. Clear skies overnight, a low of 47 degrees with south/south-west winds at 5 to 10 mph. Tuesday will be sunny along with a few afternoon clouds, a high around 80 degrees with south/south-west winds at 10 to 15 mph. Tuesday night will be partly cloudy, a low of 44 degrees with west/north-west winds at 10 to 20 mph. Akot, Maharashtra State, India, Population:92,637. At 2:19 PM IST Akot is partly cloudy and 91 to 92 degrees. Akot will have plenty of sunshine today, a high around 92 degrees with winds light and variable. Clear skies tonight, a low of 72 degrees with light and variable winds. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 3:53 AM CDT Dothan is clear and 54 degrees. Dothan will be sunny today, a high of 81 degrees with north winds at 5 to 10 mph. Clear skies tonight, a low of 51 degrees with light and variable winds. Today 10/21 In HISTORY(Courtesy of the History Channel): 1 - 1779 - American Revolution - The Continental Congress of the United States elects former congressman Henry Laurens minister to Holland on this day in 1779. Laurens first and most crucial duty as the new minister was to negotiate an alliance with Holland, which he did in 1780. During Laurens return voyage from Holland in the fall of 1780, his ship was intercepted and captured by the British Navy off the coast of Newfoundland, and he was taken prisoner. During their search of the vessel, British sailors discovered Laurens copy of the unofficial Patriot treaty with the Dutch, drafted by Congressional agent William Lee. The British went on to use the document as grounds for war against the Dutch and sent Laurens to London to stand trial before the privy council, a group of the kings closest advisors, on suspicion of high treason. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London for 15 months. On December 31, 1781, the British finally released Laurens from prison in exchange for American-held prisoner General Charles Lord Cornwallis. Following his release, Congress appointed Laurens, along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain. In one of his final acts of public service, Laurens signed the preliminary Treaty of Paris on November 30, 1782, before returning to the United States, where he retired to his home near Charleston, South Carolina. Laurens was later elected to the Continental Congress, the state legislature and the federal Constitutional Convention, but declined each office, preferring to remain in retirement until his death on December 8, 1792. 2 - 1861 - Civil War - Union troops suffer a devastating defeat in the second major engagement of the Civil War. The Battle of Balls Bluff in Virginia produced the wars first martyr and led to the creation of a Congressional committee to monitor the conduct of the war. After the Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, President Abraham Lincoln appointed General George McClellan to organize the defeated Federal Army of the Potomac. McClellan spent the fall assembling and training his force, but he was under pressure from Lincoln, the public, and Congress to take action against the Confederates, who were waiting just across the Potomac River. McClellan ordered General George McCall to make a reconnaissance across the river, and he instructed General Charles Stone to watch the nearby town of Leesburg, Virginia, while McCalls men were moving. Stone sent a detachment across the river on the night of October 20, and the inexperienced soldiers reported seeing a Rebel camp, which turned out to be shadows. Stone decided to move more men over until a force of 1,600, under the command of Colonel Edward Baker, was poised for an attack the next morning. Baker was a close friend of Lincoln, and the president had named his second son after him. Baker placed his men in a dangerous position. They were in a clearing with their backs to the edge of Balls Bluff, a 100-foot high cliff above the Potomac. They faced a wooded ridge that was rapidly filling with Southerners. The Confederates launched an attack that afternoon, and Bakers command was soon in trouble. Baker was killed, and many of his men jumped from the bluff to their deaths or scrambled down a narrow trail only to find their boats swamped in the river. Less than half made it back to the other side of the Potomac. The Union suffered 49 killed, 158 wounded, and 714 missing and captured, while the Confederates suffered 33 killed, 115 wounded, and one missing. Lincoln was stunned by the loss of his friend Baker, who became a Northern martyr despite his ineptitude in conducting the battle. The political fallout was swift. Angry Republicans were highly suspicious of McClellan, a Democrat, and other generals. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War was formed in December of that year. This group was stacked with Radical Republicans who favored tougher treatment of the South and slaveholders. The committees first investigation was the disaster at Balls Bluff, and General Stone became the scapegoat. He was arrested for treason soon after and jailed for six months. 3 - 1967 - Vietnam War - In Washington, D.C. nearly 100,000 people gather to protest the American war effort in Vietnam. More than 50,000 of the protesters marched to the Pentagon to ask for an end to the conflict. The protest was the most dramatic sign of waning U.S. support for President Lyndon Johnsons war in Vietnam. Polls taken in the summer of 1967 revealed that, for the first time, American support for the war had fallen below 50 percent. When the Johnson administration announced that it would ask for a 10 percent increase in taxes to fund the war, the publics skepticism increased. The peace movement began to push harder for an end to the war—the march on Washington was the most powerful sign of their commitment to this cause. The Johnson administration responded by launching a vigorous propaganda campaign to restore public confidence in its handling of the war. The president even went so far as to call General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, back to the United States to address Congress and the public. The effort was somewhat successful in tempering criticisms of the war. However, the Tet Offensive of early 1968 destroyed much of the Johnson Administrations credibility concerning the Vietnam War. The protest was also important in suggesting that the domestic Cold War consensus was beginning to fracture. Many of the protesters were not simply questioning Americas conduct in Vietnam, but very basis of the nations Cold War foreign policy. 4 - 1966 - Disaster - An avalanche of mud and rocks buries a school in Aberfan, Wales, killing 148 people, mostly young students. The elementary school was located below a hill where a mining operation dumped its waste. 5 - 1805 - Battle of Trafalgar - In one of the most decisive naval battles in history, a British fleet under Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain. At sea, Lord Nelson and the Royal Navy consistently thwarted Napoleon Bonaparte, who led France to preeminence on the European mainland. Nelsons last and greatest victory against the French was the Battle of Trafalgar, which began after Nelson caught sight of a Franco-Spanish force of 33 ships. Preparing to engage the enemy force on October 21, Nelson divided his 27 ships into two divisions and signaled a famous message from the flagship Victory: England expects that every man will do his duty. In five hours of fighting, the British devastated the enemy fleet, destroying 19 enemy ships. No British ships were lost, but 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded in the heavy fighting. The battle raged at its fiercest around the Victory, and a French sniper shot Nelson in the shoulder and chest. The admiral was taken below and died about 30 minutes before the end of the battle. Nelsons last words, after being informed that victory was imminent, were Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty. Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon would never invade Britain. Nelson, hailed as the savior of his nation, was given a magnificent funeral in St. Pauls Cathedral in London. A column was erected to his memory in the newly named Trafalgar Square, and numerous streets were renamed in his honor. 6 - 1921 - Presidential - President Warren G. Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchings—illegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South. Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption, Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on womens suffrage, but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week. During the 1920 presidential campaign, Hardings ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light. Opponents claimed that one of Hardings great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies. Harding rebuffed the rumors, saying he was from white pioneer stock and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws. Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed. In fact, civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Hardings public denunciation of lynching would appear insincere if one were to believe allegations that he had actually been inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in office. In 1987, historian Wyn Wade published The Fiery Cross, in which a former Ku Klux Klan member claimed to have witnessed Hardings initiation into the Klan on the White House lawn. Scholars have since pored over Hardings papers, but have found no evidence to support this allegation. 7 - 1918 - World War One - A German U-boat submarine fires the last torpedo of World War I, as Germany ceases its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Unrestricted submarine warfare was first introduced in World War I in early 1915, when Germany declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be attacked by the German navy. To confront the overwhelmingly superiority of the British navy, the Germans utilized their most dangerous weapon, the stealthy U-boat submarine. A string of attacks on merchant ships began, culminating in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. The attack on the Lusitania—which killed 1,201 people, including 128 Americans—sparked the ire of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who demanded an end to German attacks against unarmed merchant ships. Over the next year, the German navy reluctantly limited the practice at the urging of the country’s government, who feared antagonizing the U.S. and provoking its intervention in the war against Germany. At the beginning of 1917, however, naval and army commanders managed to convince Kaiser Wilhelm II of the need to resume the unrestricted submarine policy, claiming that unrestricted U-boat warfare against the British at sea could result in a German victory by that fall. On February 1, Germany resumed its submarine attacks on enemy and neutral shipping interests at sea. Two days later, Wilson broke diplomatic relations with Germany; on April 6, 1917, the U.S. formally entered World War I on the side of the Allied powers. The hope that Germany—despite the deadlock on the battlefields of the Western Front—could win the war by naval warfare persisted until the last months of the war, growing fainter with the Allied resurgence in France and Belgium in the summer of 1918 and the deepening discontent and frustration with the war on the German home front, as well as among its soldiers and sailors. In mid-October 1918, as the German government grappled with how to obtain an armistice without damaging Germany’s chances to obtain favorable peace terms and its army commanders contended with the dire situation at the front, Admiral Reinhardt Scheer dealt the final blow to Germany’s U-boat strategy, ordering all his navy’s submarines to return to their German bases. The final German torpedo of World War I was fired in the Irish Sea on October 21, sinking a small British merchant ship, the Saint Barcham, and drowning its eight crewmen. In a measure of the characteristic aggression of German submarine warfare, a total of 318 merchant seamen had been killed that month alone. Now, however, the German submarines returned home, leaving the entire strategically important Belgian coast firmly under Allied control. 8 - 1941 - World War Two - German soldiers go on a rampage, killing thousands of Yugoslavian civilians, including whole classes of schoolboys. Despite attempts to maintain neutrality at the outbreak of World War II, Yugoslavia finally succumbed to signing a friendship treaty with Germany in late 1940, finally joining the Tripartite Axis Pact in March 1941. The masses of Yugoslavians protested this alliance, and shortly thereafter the regents who had been trying to hold a fragile confederacy of ethnic groups and regions together since the creation of Yugoslavia at the close of World War I fell to a coup, and the Serb army placed Prince Peter into power. The prince-now the king--rejected the alliance with Germany-and the Germans retaliated with the Luftwaffe bombing of Belgrade, killing about 17,000 people. With Yugoslavian resistance collapsing, King Peter removed to London, setting up a government-in-exile. Hitler then began to carve up Yugoslavia into puppet states, primarily divided along ethnic lines, hoping to win the loyalty of some-such as the Croats-with the promise of a postwar independent state. (In fact, many Croats did fight alongside the Germans in its battle against the Soviet Union.) Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy all took bites out of Yugoslavia, as Serb resisters were regularly massacred. On October 21, in Kragujevac, 2,300 men and boys were murdered; Kraljevo saw 7,000 more killed by German troops, and in the region of Macva, 6,000 men, women, and children were murdered. Serb partisans, fighting under the leadership of the socialist Josef Tito Brozovich, won support from Britain and aid from the USSR in their battle against the occupiers. The people just do not recognize authority...they follow the Communist bandits blindly, complained one German official reporting back to Berlin. The four day Extended Yonkers Weather Forecast is: Wednesday(22), thunder showers, 60% chance of rain, 57/50; Thursday(23), AM showers, 50% chance of rain, 56/50; Friday(24), partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, 63/49; and Saturday(25), mostly sunny, 10% chance of rain, 65/48. The Sports Scene: MLB: San Francisco Giant will be in Kansas City to face the Royals in game 1 of the World Series, game time is 8 PM on FOX. In NFL Monday Night Action: The Steelers topped the Texans 30-23. NHL Action: Edm 3-TB 2. Tonight the New Rangers face off against the New Jersey Devils in Newark, the Toronto Maple Leafs visit the island to play the New York Islanders, SJ at Bos, Det at Mon, Ari at Nas, Car at Wpg, Phi at Chi, Van at Dal, Fla at Col, and TB at Cgy. In NBA Pre-season Action: Milwaukee Bucks beat the New York Knicks 120-107, the Brooklyn Nets 99- Phiadelphia 76ers 88, NOP 88- Was 84; Cle 107-Chi 98, Atl 117- Cha 114 OT, Dal 108-Mem 103, and SAS 106-Sac 99. Tonight: Ind at Min, Uta at OKC, Hou at Mia, Por at Den, Phi at LAL, and LAC at GSW. Today will almost feel like a spring day instead of an autumn day, so despite a little rain enjoy it, but be careful driving on the wet leaves! Thank you Mary Ann Rollinson Ryan for posting your pictures from your Yonkers visit, Im sure many of us miss the view of the Palisades especially at sundown. Have a great Tuesday, everybody, and as always please keep safe, PUSH, and keep smiling!
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 09:21:36 +0000
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