Good morning Yonkers, we start a new work week with Mundane Monday, on the hills, it is clear and 63 degrees the north-west winds at 5 mph, 84% humidity, the dew point is at 58 degrees, the barometer is 30.1 inches and steady, and the visibility is 10 miles. Today Yonkers will be sunny with a high around 85 degrees with light and variable winds. You will have a few passing clouds tonight, a low of 66 degrees with variable light winds. Sun-up occurs at 6:16 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 7:38 PM. You’ll have 13 hours and 22 minutes of available daylight. Little Creek, Kent County, Delaware, Population: 224. Currently Little Creek is clear and 60 degrees. Little Creek will be sunny today, a high near 80 degrees with winds from the east/north-east at 10 to 15 mph. Tonight will be partly cloudy, a low of 62 degrees with east/north-east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Ibadan, State of Oyo, Nigeria, Population: 2,949,000. At 9:53 AM WAT Ibadan is mostly cloudy and 75 degrees. Ibadan will see isolated thunderstorms this morning then mainly cloudy during the afternoon, with thunderstorms likely, a high of 83 degrees with south-west winds at 5 to 10 mph. The chance of rain is 90%. Tonight thunderstorms are likely, a low of 71 degrees with south/south-west winds at 5 to 10 mph. There is a 90% chance of rain. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 3:58 AM CDT Dothan is clear and 76 degrees. Dothan will be sunny today, a high of 92 degrees with east/north-east winds at 10 to 15 mph. Clear skies for tonight with some cloudiness after 2 AM, a low of 68 degrees with east/north-east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Today 8/25 In HISTORY: 1 - 1835 - The first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appears in the New York Sun newspaper. Known collectively as The Great Moon Hoax, the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The byline was Dr. Andrew Grant, described as a colleague of Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer of the day. Herschel had in fact traveled to Capetown, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new telescope. As Grant described it, Herschel had found evidence of life forms on the moon, including such fantastic animals as unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats. The articles also offered vivid description of the moons geography, complete with massive craters, enormous amethyst crystals, rushing rivers and lush vegetation. The New York Sun, founded in 1833, was one of the new penny press papers that appealed to a wider audience with a cheaper price and a more narrative style of journalism. From the day the first moon hoax article was released, sales of the paper shot up considerably. It was exciting stuff, and readers lapped it up. The only problem was that none of it was true. The Edinburgh Journal of Science had stopped publication years earlier, and Grant was a fictional character. The articles were most likely written by Richard Adams Locke, a Sun reporter educated at Cambridge University. Intended as satire, they were designed to poke fun at earlier, serious speculations about extraterrestrial life, particularly those of Reverend Thomas Dick, a popular science writer who claimed in his bestselling books that the moon alone had 4.2 billion inhabitants. Readers were completely taken in by the story, however, and failed to recognize it as satire. The craze over Herschels supposed discoveries even fooled a committee of Yale University scientists, who traveled to New York in search of the Edinburgh Journal articles. After Sun employees sent them back and forth between the printing and editorial offices, hoping to discourage them, the scientists returned to New Haven without realizing they had been tricked. On September 16, 1835, the Sun admitted the articles had been a hoax. People were generally amused by the whole thing, and sales of the paper didn’t suffer. The Sun continued operation until 1950, when it merged with the New York World-Telegram. The merger folded in 1967. A new New York Sun newspaper was founded in 2002, but it has no relation to the original. 2 - 1776 - American Revolution - Influential political philosopher David Hume dies in Edinburgh, Scotland, on this day in 1776. Although Hume died when the American Revolution was barely underway, his essay Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth greatly affected the ideas of the drafters of the federal Constitution in 1787. Most famously, James Madison contemplated Humes proposals for an ideal government and, more precisely, Humes thoughts regarding the prevention of faction as he constructed his argument in favor of the Constitution in Federalist X. In establishing a government for the new nation, Madison was particularly concerned with avoiding a tyranny of the majority, defined as the largest faction in a republic pursuing its interests while ignoring or suppressing the interests and voices of all opposition. Hume, as well as most political theorists of the 18th century, believed that the only way to control faction, or what today would be called special interests, was to created small republics, where the common interest of all would be self-evident. Therefore, no majority block could take control at the expense of a significant minority. Madison respectfully rejected the Humean logic he had so carefully studied, and argued that the best way to prevent one faction from driving out all opposing interest was to create such large republics that no one special interest could motivate a majority to tyrannize their opposition. Even in a small republic, he argued, one or two individuals might be tyrannized by what the majority deemed to be the common interest. In a large republic, so many factions and interests would exist that they would have to find a means of peaceful coexistence. In this way, Madison successfully took a term that struck fear in Humes heart—faction--and presented it as a great benefit of the new American system of federalism. In his eyes, faction would be a positive force in the new, and diverse, United States. 3 - 1864 - Civil War - At the Second Battle of Ream’s Station, Virginia, Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops. The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia. For more than two months, Lee had been under siege at Petersburg by General Ulysses S. Grants Army of the Potomac. Grant had tried to cut the rail line in June and again in August. On August 18, his troops succeeded in capturing a section of the track, but the Confederates simply began to stop the trains further south of Petersburg and haul the supplies by wagon into the city. Grant responded by ordering his troops to tear up the track and move further south. Soldiers from General Winfield Hancocks corps tore up eight miles of rail, but Lee moved quickly to halt the operation. On August 25, General Ambrose P. Hills infantry and General Wade Hamptons cavalry were ordered to attack the Federals at Reams Station, and they drove the Yankees into defensive positions. The Union earthworks, hastily constructed the day before, were arranged in a square shape that was too small and so Confederate shells easily passed over the top. The green troop in Union General John Gibbons division was unnerved by the bombardment, and a Confederate attack broke through the Yankee lines. The Union force retreated in disarray. Hancocks corps lost 2,700 men, most of whom were captured during the retreat. Hill and Hampton lost just 700. The battle was a stinging defeat for Hancocks proud Second Corps, which had held the Union line against Picketts Charge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and was considered among the best in the Army of the Potomac. Gibbon and Hancock blamed each other for the disaster, and both soon left their positions in the Second Corps. 4 - 325 - The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical debate held by the early Christian church, concludes with the establishment of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Convened by Roman Emperor Constantine I in May, the council also deemed the Arian belief of Christ as inferior to God as heretical, thus resolving an early church crisis. The controversy began when Arius, an Alexandrian priest, questioned the full divinity of Christ because, unlike God, Christ was born and had a beginning. What began as an academic theological debate spread to Christian congregations throughout the empire, threatening a schism in the early Christian church. Roman Emperor Constantine I, who converted to Christianity in 312, called bishops from all over his empire to resolve the crisis and urged the adoption of a new creed that would resolve the ambiguities between Christ and God. Meeting at Nicaea in present-day Turkey, the council established the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity and asserted that only the Son became incarnate as Jesus Christ. The Arian leaders were subsequently banished from their churches for heresy. The Emperor Constantine presided over the opening of the council and contributed to the discussion. 5 - 1939 - The Wizard of Oz, which will become one of the best-loved movies in history, opens in theaters around the United States. 6 - 1950 - in anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order putting Americas railroads under the control of the U.S. Army, as of August 27, at 4:00 pm. 7 - 1967 - Vietnam War - Defense Secretary McNamara concedes that the U.S. bombing campaign has had little effect on the Norths war-making capability. At the same time, McNamara refuses a request from military commanders to bomb all MIG bases in North Vietnam. In Hanoi, North Vietnams Administrative Committee orders all workers in light industry and all craftsmen and their families to leave the city; only persons vital to the citys defense and production were to remain. 8 - 1971 - Vietnam War - U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, among the first U.S. ground units sent to Vietnam, ceases combat operations and prepares to redeploy to the United States as part of Nixons troop withdrawal plan. As the redeployment commenced, the communists launched a new offensive to disrupt the upcoming General Assembly elections in South Vietnam. The height of the new offensive occurred from August 28 to August 30, when the Communists executed 96 attacks in the northern part of South Vietnam. U.S. bases also came under attack at Lai Khe, Cam Ranh Bay, and other areas. Nixons troop reduction plans were supposedly tied to the level of enemy activity on the battlefield, but once they began, very little attention was paid to what the enemy was doing and the withdrawals continued unabated. 9 - 1914 - World War One - Over the course of five days, beginning August 25, 1914, German troops stationed in the Belgian village of Louvain during the opening month of World War I burn and loot much of the town, executing hundreds of civilians. Located between Liege, the fortress town that saw heavy fighting during the first weeks of the German invasion, and the Belgian capital of Brussels, Louvain became the symbol, in the eyes of international public opinion, of the shockingly brutal nature of the German war machine. From the first days they crossed into Belgium, violating that small country’s neutrality on the way to invade France, German forces looted and destroyed much of the countryside and villages in their path, killing significant numbers of civilians, including women and children. These brutal actions, the Germans claimed, were in response to what they saw as an illegal civilian resistance to the German occupation, organized and promoted by the Belgian government and other community leaders—especially the Catholic Church—and carried out by irregular combatants or franc-tireurs (snipers, or free shooters) of the type that had participated in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71. In reality this type of civilian resistance—despite being sanctioned by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which the Germans objected to—did not exist to any significant degree in Belgium during the German invasion, but was used as an excuse to justify the German pursuit of a theory of terror previously articulated by the enormously influential 19th-century Prussian military philosopher Karl von Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz, the civilian population of an enemy country should not be exempted from war, but in fact should be made to feel its effects, and be forced to put pressure on their government to surrender. The burning of Louvain came on the heels of a massacre in the village of Dinant, near Liege, on August 23, in which the German soldiers had killed some 674 civilians on the orders of their corps commander. Two days later, the small but hardy Belgian army made a sudden sharp attack on the rear lines of the German 1st Army, commanded by General Alexander von Kluck, forcing the Germans to retreat in disorder to Louvain. In the confusion that followed, they would later claim, civilians had fired on the German soldiers or had fired from the village’s rooftops to send a signal to the Belgian army, or even to approaching French or British troops. The Belgians, by contrast, would claim the Germans had mistakenly fired on each other in the dark. Whatever happened did not matter: the Germans burned Louvain not to punish specific Belgian acts but to provide an example, before the world, of what happened to those who resisted mighty Germany. Over the next five days, as Louvain and its buildings—including its renowned university and library, founded in 1426—burned, a great outcry grew in the international community, with refugees pouring out of the village and eyewitness accounts filling the foreign press. Richard Harding Davis, an American correspondent in Belgium, arrived at Louvain by troop train on August 27; his report later appeared in the New York Tribune under the headline GERMANS SACK LOUVAIN; WOMEN AND CLERGY SHOT. A wireless statement from Berlin issued by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the incidents, stating that Louvain was punished by the destruction of the city. The Allied press went crazy, with British editorials proclaiming Treason to Civilization and insisting the Germans had proved themselves descendants not of the great author Goethe but of the bloodthirsty Attila the Hun. By war’s end, the Germans would kill some 5,521 civilians in Belgium (and 896 in France). Above all, German actions in Belgium were intended to demonstrate to the Allies that the German empire was a formidable power that should be submitted to, and that those resisting that power—whether soldier or civilian, belligerent or neutral—would be met with a force of total destruction. Ironically, for many in the Allied countries, and in the rest of the world as well, a different conclusion emerged from the flames of Louvain: Germany must be defeated at all costs, without compromise or settlement, because a German victory would mean the defeat of civilization. 10 - 1944 - World War Two - French General Jacques Leclerc enters the free French capital triumphantly. Pockets of German intransigence remained, but Paris was free from German control. More than 500 Resistance fighters died in the struggle for Paris, as well as 127 civilians. Once the city was free from German rule, French collaborators were often killed upon capture, without trial. Wake up Yonkersites, (at least in the eastern US time zone), another Monday and week of toil is upon us. We have a warming trend for the last week of August, but no 90 degrees days. Can anyone remember if we had a 90 degrees day this summer? I know there werent many. The extended forecast: Tuesday, sunny, 0% chance of rain, 86/66; Wednesday, mostly sunny, 10% chance of rain, 89/66; Thursday, sunny, 0% chance of rain, 83/60; Friday, mostly sunny, 0% chance of rain, 79/62. Baseball yesterday, the Yankees continue to gain ground on Baltimore beating the White Sox 7- 4 in 10 innings, the Orioles dropped their game to the Cubs 2 - 1, the Rays 2 - Blue Jays 1, and Mariners 8 - Red Sox 6. In the National League the Mets beat the Dodgers 11 - 3. I hope everyone had a beautiful and enjoyable weekend and I hope this upcoming work week is a good and productive one. Pray for those in Napa Valley affected by the strong earthquake they have to deal with and as always please keep safe and keep smiling!
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 09:15:17 +0000
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