Good morning Yonkersites, it is Mundane Monday and time for another week of the rat race. Currently Yonkers is mostly cloudy and 63 degrees with north/north-east winds at 6 mph, 67% humidity, the dew point is 52 degrees, the barometer is 30.2 inches and rising, and the visibility is 10 miles. ***THERE IS A COASTAL FLOOD STATEMENT IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM TODAY UNTIL 6 AM WEDNESDAY FOR SOUTHERN WESTCHESTER.*** Yonkers, today, will be sunny to partly cloudy, a high of 78 degrees with east/north-east winds at 10 to 20 mph. A few passing clouds tonight, a low of 62 degrees with east winds at 10 to 15 mph. Sun-up occurs at 6:30 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 7:15 PM. You’ll have 12 hours and 45 minutes of available daylight. Brooklyn, Forrest County, Mississippi, Population: Unknown. At 3:51 AM CDT Brooklyn is fair and 72 degrees. Brooklyn will have sunny skies this morning followed by thunderstorms during the afternoon, a high near 90 degrees with light and variable winds. There is an 80% chance of rain. Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight, a low around 70 degrees with light and variable winds. The chance of rain is 80%. El Fuerte, Sinaloa State, Mexico, Population: 12,566. At 2:56 AM MDT El Fuerte is cloudy and 78 degrees. Thunderstorms overnight for El Fuerte, a low of 73 degrees with light and variable winds. The chance of rain is 80%. Today will be partly cloudy with after showers of thunderstorms, a high around 95 degrees with light and variable winds, There is a 50% chance of rain. Partly cloudy skies tonight, a low of 74 degrees with light and variable winds. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 4:01 AM CDT Dothan is cloudy and 73 degrees. Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more prevalent in the afternoon, a high of 87 degrees with light and variable winds. There is an 80% chance of rain. Scattered thunderstorms early this evening then partly cloudy after midnight, a low of 71 degrees with light and variable winds. There is a 60% chance of rain. Today 9/08 In HISTORY: 1 - 1781 - American Revolution - After receiving reinforcements on this day in 1781, Major General Nathanael Greene of the Continental Army resumes offensive action against Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart and the British soldiers at Eutaw Springs, located on the banks of the Santee River in South Carolina. The Patriots approached in the early morning, forcing the British soldiers to abandon their uneaten breakfasts in order to fight. Greene commanded approximately 2,200 men compared to the less than 2,000 British soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Stewart. Unbeknownst to most of the Patriots, however, British Major John Majoribanks had managed to secure his unit in a stone house, impervious to Patriot Lieutenant Colonel William Washingtons cavalry attack. When Patriot soldiers took over the British camp and began to devour the abandoned breakfast, Majoribanks set his men upon them. A four-hour inconclusive bloodbath in the burning sun ensued, ending in both sides retreating from the battlefield. More than 500 Americans were killed or wounded in the action. British losses were even greater and the greatest sustained by any army in a single battle during the entire Revolutionary War. By the end of the battle, 700 of their soldiers were killed, wounded or missing. Because of the high number of casualties the British sustained, Stewart subsequently ordered his men to withdraw to Charleston, South Carolina, to regroup. The Battle of Eutaw Springs was one of the hardest fought and bloodiest battles of the Revolution and proved to be the last major engagement of the war to take place in the South. The Patriots partial victory cemented their near-complete control of the southern section of the country. 2 - 1863 - Civil War - At the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, A small Confederate force thwarts a Federal invasion of Texas at the mouth of the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border. In November 1862, Confederate General John Bankhead Magruder assumed command of the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Union controlled most of the harbors along the Texas coast, but Magruder quickly changed that with two major assaults on Union defenses. He captured Galveston, Texas, on January 1, 1863, and then drove off a Yankee force at Sabine Pass later that month. After Magruders forces drove the Union ships away, the Rebels were left with two harbors from which to operate. In the summer of 1863, the Union commander in the region, General Nathaniel Banks, launched an expedition to retake Sabine Pass. He placed General William B. Franklin in charge of an amphibious force that included four gunboats, 18 transports, and nearly 6,000 troops. They set sail from New Orleans, Louisiana, and arrived off Sabine Pass on September 7. The next day, Franklin called for an invasion of the Confederate band of 47 Irish immigrants commanded by Lieutenant Richard W. Dick Dowling, which was holed up inside of Fort Griffin, a stronghold armed with six old smoothbore cannons. Dowlings men had one major advantage: Their guns were fixed on the narrow channel of Sabine Pass, through which the Yankees would have to sail in order to approach Fort Griffin. The battle commenced in the afternoon, and the Confederate cannons quickly cut into the Union flotilla. The first two ships to go through the pass were badly damaged and ran aground. The troop transports ran into trouble, and one Union ship turned around without firing a shot. Franklin called off the attack and returned to New Orleans. While the Confederates did not lose a single man, 28 Yankees were killed, 75 were wounded, and 315 were captured. The loss was humiliating for the Union. Franklin was ridiculed, and Dowlings Rebels became heroes. Banks nixed plans for an invasion of east Texas and focused his attention on the Rio Grande Valley. 3- 1945 - Cold War - U.S. troops land in Korea to begin their postwar occupation of the southern part of that nation, almost exactly one month after Soviet troops had entered northern Korea to begin their own occupation. Although the U.S. and Soviet occupations were supposed to be temporary, the division of Korea quickly became permanent. Korea had been a Japanese possession since the early 20th century. During World War II, the allies--the United States, Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain--made a somewhat hazy agreement that Korea should become an independent country following the war. As the war progressed, U.S. officials began to press the Soviets to enter the war against Japan. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin pledged that his nation would declare war on Japan exactly three months after Nazi Germany was defeated. A few months later, at the Potsdam Conference in July and August 1945, it was agreed that Soviet troops would occupy the northern portion of Korea, while American forces would take a similar action in southern Korea in order to secure the area and liberate it from Japanese control. The occupations would be temporary, and Korea would eventually decide its own political future, though no date was set for the end of the U.S. and Soviet occupations. On August 8, the Soviets declared war on Japan. On August 9, Soviet forces invaded northern Korea. A few days later, Japan surrendered. Keeping to their part of the bargain, U.S. forces entered southern Korea on September 8, 1945. Over the next few years, the situation in Korea steadily worsened. A civil war between communist and nationalist forces in southern Korea resulted in thousands of people killed and wounded. The Soviets steadfastly refused to consider any plans for the reunification of Korea. The United States reacted by setting up a government in South Korea, headed by Syngman Rhee. The Soviets established a communist regime in North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Il-Sung. In 1948, the United States again offered to hold national elections, but the Soviets refused the offer. Elections were held in South Korea, and Rhees government received a popular mandate. The Soviets refused to recognize Rhees government, though, and insisted that Kim Il-Sung was the true leader of all Korea. Having secured the establishment of a communist government in North Korea, Soviet troops withdrew in 1948; and U.S. troops in South Korea followed suit in 1949. In 1950, the North Koreans attempted to reunite the nation by force and launched a massive military assault on South Korea. The United States quickly came to the aid of South Korea, beginning a three-year involvement in the bloody and frustrating Korean War. Korea remains a divided nation today, and the North Korean regime is one of the few remaining communist governments left in the world. 4 - 1900 - One of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history hits Galveston, Texas, on this day in 1900, killing more than 6,000 people. The storm caused so much destruction on the Texas coast that reliable estimates of the number of victims are difficult to make. Some believe that as many as 12,000 people perished, which would make it the most deadly day in American history. 5 - 1644 - Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, to an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls. Stuyvesant had hoped to resist the English, but he was an unpopular ruler, and his Dutch subjects refused to rally around him. Following its capture, New Amsterdams name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission. 6 - 1941 - World War Two - During World War II, German forces begin their siege of Leningrad, a major industrial center and the USSRs second-largest city. The German armies were later joined by Finnish forces that advanced against Leningrad down the Karelian Isthmus. The siege of Leningrad, also known as the 900-Day Siege though it lasted a grueling 872 days, resulted in the deaths of some one million of the citys civilians and Red Army defenders. 7 - 1974 - President Gerald Ford, who assumed office on the heels of President Richard M. Nixons resignation, pardons his predecessor for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. 8 - 1954 - Vietnam War - Having been directed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to put together an alliance to contain any communist aggression in the free territories of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, or Southeast Asia in general, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles forges an agreement establishing a military alliance that becomes the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). 9 - 1968 - Vietnam War - Troung Quang An becomes the first South Vietnamese general killed in action when his aircraft is shot down. The commander of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division (more popularly known as the Big Red One), Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware, suffered a similar fate when his helicopter was shot down on September 13. Maj. Gen. Ware was one of two U.S. division commanders killed during the war; the other was Maj. Gen. George W. Casey of the 1st Cavalry Division who was killed in a helicopter crash on July 7, 1970. 10 - 1915 - World War One - A German Zeppelin commanded by Heinrich Mathy, one of the great airship commanders of World War I, hits Aldersgate in central London, killing 22 people and causing £500,000 worth of damage. The Zeppelin, a motor-driven rigid airship, was developed by German inventor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin in 1900. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, the von Zeppelin-designed rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed. However, in the case of the zeppelin, size was exchanged for safety, as the heavy steel-framed airships were vulnerable to explosion because they had to be lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas instead of non-flammable helium gas. The Germans enjoyed great success with the Zeppelin over the course of 1915 and 1916, terrorizing the skies over the British Isles. The first Zeppelin attack on London came on May 31, 1915; it killed 28 people and wounded 60 more. By May 1916, the Germans had killed a total of 550 Britons with aerial bombing. One of the best-known Zeppelin pilots was Heinrich Mathy, born in 1883 in Mannheim, Germany. Flying his famed airship L13 on September 8, 1915, Mathy dropped his bombs on the Aldersgate area of central London, causing great damage by fire and killing 22 people. The following summer, Mathy piloted a new Zeppelin, the L31 in more attacks on London on the night of August 24-25, 1916. His ship was damaged upon landing; while he was waiting for repairs to be made, Mathy received word that the British had managed for the first time to shoot down a Zeppelin, using incendiary bullets. Shortly after that, Mathy wrote pessimistically: It is only a question of time before we join the rest. Everyone admits that they feel it. Our nerves are ruined by mistreatment. If anyone should say that he was not haunted by visions of burning airships, then he would be a braggart. True to his prediction, Mathy’s L31 was shot down during a raid on London on the night of October 1-2, 1916. He is buried in Staffordshire, in a cemetery constructed for the burial of Germans killed on British soil during both World Wars. 11 - 1943 - World War Two - Gen. Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies. Germany reacted with Operation Axis, the Allies with Operation Avalanche. With Mussolini deposed from power and the earlier collapse of the fascist government in July, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, the man who had assumed power in Mussolinis stead by request of King Victor Emanuel, began negotiating with Gen. Eisenhower for weeks. Weeks later, Badoglio finally approved a conditional surrender, allowing the Allies to land in southern Italy and begin beating the Germans back up the peninsula. Operation Avalanche, the Allied invasion of Italy, was given the go-ahead, and the next day would see Allied troops land in Salerno. The Germans too snapped into action. Ever since Mussolini had begun to falter, Hitler had been making plans to invade Italy to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold that would situate them within easy reach of the German-occupied Balkans. On September 8, Hitler launched Operation Axis, the occupation of Italy. As German troops entered Rome, General Badoglio and the royal family fled Rome for southeastern Italy to set up a new antifascist government. Italian troops began surrendering to their former German allies; where they resisted, as had happened earlier in Greece, they were slaughtered (1,646 Italian soldiers were murdered by Germans on the Greek island of Cephalonia, and the 5,000 that finally surrendered were ultimately shot). One of the goals of Operation Axis was to keep Italian navy vessels out of the hands of the Allies. When the Italian battleship Roma headed for an Allied-controlled port in North Africa, it was sunk by German bombers. In fact, the Roma had the dubious honor of becoming the first ship ever sunk by a radio-controlled guided missile. More than 1,500 crewmen drowned. The Germans also scrambled to move Allied POWs to labor camps in Germany in order to prevent their escape. In fact, many POWS did manage to escape before the German invasion, and several hundred volunteered to stay in Italy to fight alongside the Italian guerillas in the north. The Italians may have surrendered, but their war was far from over. The four day extended forecast for Yonkers: Tuesday, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, 73/62; Wednesday, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, 77/65; Thursday, morning thunderstorms, 40% chance of rain, 83/66; Friday, morning thunderstorms, 80% chance of rain, 77/61. The first weekend of the football season kicked off yesterday with the New York Jets beating the Oakland Raiders 19-14 in a game that should of been a blowout for the Jets. The Giants play the Lions in Monday night football. In baseball, the Yankees lost again, on the day they honored Derek Jeter, by being shutout by the Royals 2-0, the Orioles defeated the Rays 7-5 in 11 innings, while the Blue Jays beat the Red Sox 3-1. The Mets despite trying to lose the game in the 9th inning held on to beat the Reds 4-3. Tomorrow I will not be posting. I want to be at the polls when they open to use my right to vote in the primary being held in New York State. The polls open at 6 AM and then I am off to Slower Lower Delaware to visit my sister and brother and law, my nephew and his wife coming in from Wisconsin (I havent seen them in a few years, and my step-niece coming in from Seattle, Washington. I have never met her before. I will post again of Wednesday. Until then, keep safe, PUSH, and keep smiling!
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 09:22:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015