Good morning Yonkersonians, at 5:33 AM EDT if are just waking up, it is partly cloudy and 49 to 50 degrees with west/north-west winds at 9 mph making it feel like 45 degrees, 65% humidity, the dew point is 37 degrees, the barometer is 29.8 inches and steady, and the visibility is 10 miles. Yonkers will have plenty of sunshine, a high of 66 degrees with west winds at 10 to 15 mph. Partly cloudy tonight, a low of 51 degrees with west winds at 10 to 15 mph. Sun-up occurs at 7:19 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 6:00 PM. You’ll have 10 hours and 40 minutes of available daylight. Bass River, Burlington County, New Jersey, Population: 1,439. At 5:39 AM EDT Bass River is clear and 43 to 48 degrees. Bass River will be sunny today, a high of 67 degrees with west winds at 10 to 15 mph. Clear skies for tonight, a low of 52 degrees with west/south-west at 10 to 15 mph. Bregenz, Vorarlberg State, Austria, Population: 28,412. At 11:42 AM CEST Bregens is cloudy and 46 to 47 degrees. Bregenz will have occasional light rain, a high of 53 degrees with light and variable winds. The chance of rain is 50%. Light rain early this evening then remaining cloudy, a low around 45 degrees with light and variable winds. There is a 40% chance of rain. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 4:46 AM CDT Dothan is clear and 48 to 51 degrees. Abundant sunshine awaits Dothan today, a high of 79 degrees with north/north-west winds at 5 to 10 mph. Clear skies tonight, a low near 55 degrees with light and variable winds. Today 10/25 In HISTORY(Courtesy of the History Channel): 1 - 1774 - American Revolution - The First Continental Congress sends a respectful petition to King George III to inform his majesty that if it had not been for the acts of oppression forced upon the colonies by the British Parliament, the American people would be standing behind British rule. Despite the anger that the American public felt towards the United Kingdom after the British Parliament established the Coercive Acts—called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists—Congress was still willing to assert its loyalty to the king. In return for this loyalty, Congress asked the king to address and resolve the specific grievances of the colonies. The petition, written by Continental Congressman John Dickinson, laid out what Congress felt was undo oppression of the colonies by the British Parliament. Their grievances mainly had to do with the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts that were established to punish colonists and to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party. The first of the Coercive Acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston to all colonists until damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid. The second, the Massachusetts Government Act, gave the British government total control of town meetings, taking all decisions out of the hands of the colonists. The third, the Administration of Justice Act, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and the fourth, the Quartering Act, required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, including in private homes as a last resort. The king did not respond to the petition to Congress’ satisfaction and eight months later on July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress adopted a resolution entitled Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, the resolution laid out the reasons for taking up arms and starting a violent revolution against British rule of the colonies. 2 - 1861 - Civil War - Signaling an important shift in the history of naval warfare, the keel of the Union ironclad Monitor is laid at Greenpoint, New York. Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles appointed an Ironclad Board when he heard rumors that the Confederates were trying to build an iron-hulled ship, as such a vessel could wreak havoc on the Unions wooden armada. In September 1861, the board granted approval for engineer John Ericsson, a native of Sweden, to begin constructing the U.S. Navys first ironclad. The wooden keel was laid at the Continental Iron Works at Greenpoint. Carpenters worked around the clock on the frame while the iron sheathing was prepared for the hull. The vessel was not large—172 feet long and 41 feet wide—but its design was unique. The craft had an unusually low profile, rising from the water only 18 inches. A 20-foot cylindrical turret in the middle of the ship housed two 11-inch Dahlgren guns that topped the flat, iron deck. The ship had a draft of less than 11 feet so it could operate in the shallow harbors and rivers of the South. Ericsson pushed the production to be as speedy as possible, but he could not deliver the ship by the January 12, 1862, delivery date. It was finally launched into New Yorks East River on January 30. Many small engine problems also needed to be solved before the craft was commissioned on February 25. The Monitor sailed for Virginia soon after, arriving at Chesapeake Bay on March 6. On March 8, 1862, it engaged in one of the most famous naval duels in history when it clashed with the Confederate ironclad the Virginia (which had been constructed from the captured Union ship Merrimack). A day of heavy pounding produced a draw; each ship was immune from the others shots. A new naval era had dawned. 3 - 1971 - Cold War - In a dramatic reversal of its long-standing commitment to the Nationalist Chinese government of Taiwan, and a policy of non-recognition of the communist Peoples Republic of China (PRC), Americas U.N. representatives vote to seat the PRC as a permanent member. Over American objections, Taiwan was expelled. The reasons for the apparently drastic change in U.S. policy were not hard to discern. The United States had come to value closer relations with the PRC more than its historical commitment to Taiwan. U.S. interest in having the PRCs help in resolving the sticky Vietnam situation; the goal of using U.S. influence with the PRC as diplomatic leverage against the Soviets; and the desire for lucrative economic relations with the PRC, were all factors in the U.S. decision. Relations with the PRC thereupon soared, highlighted by President Richard Nixons visit to China in 1972. Not surprisingly, diplomatic relations with Taiwan noticeably cooled, though the United States still publicly avowed that it would defend Taiwan if it were attacked. 4 - 1983 - Granada War - President Ronald Reagan, citing the threat posed to American nationals on the Caribbean nation of Grenada by that nations Marxist regime, orders the Marines to invade and secure their safety. There were nearly 1,000 Americans in Grenada at the time, many of them students at the islands medical school. In little more than a week, Grenadas government was overthrown. The situation on Grenada had been of concern to American officials since 1979, when the leftist Maurice Bishop seized power and began to develop close relations with Cuba. In 1983, another Marxist, Bernard Coard, had Bishop assassinated and took control of the government. Protesters clashed with the new government and violence escalated. Citing the danger to the U.S. citizens in Grenada, Reagan ordered nearly 2,000 U.S. troops into the island, where they soon found themselves facing opposition from Grenadan armed forces and groups of Cuban military engineers, in Grenada to repair and expand the islands airport. Matters were not helped by the fact that U.S. forces had to rely on minimal intelligence about the situation. (The maps used by many of them were, in fact, old tourist maps of the island.) Reagan ordered in more troops, and by the time the fighting was done, nearly 6,000 U.S. troops were in Grenada. Nearly 20 of these troops were killed and over a hundred wounded; over 60 Grenadan and Cuban troops were killed. Coards government collapsed and was replaced by one acceptable to the United States. A number of Americans were skeptical of Reagans defense of the invasion, noting that it took place just days after a disastrous explosion in a U.S. military installation in Lebanon killed over 240 U.S. troops, calling into question the use of military force to achieve U.S. goals. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration claimed a great victory, calling it the first rollback of communist influence since the beginning of the Cold War. 5 - 2000 - Disaster - A Russian military plane crashes into a mountain in Georgia, killing all 83 people on board. Poor visibility and pilot error caused the horrific crash. 6 - 1415 - 100 Years War - During the Hundred Years War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, leads his forces to victory at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France. Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, a vast French army of 20,000 men stood in his path, greatly outnumbering the exhausted English archers, knights, and men-at-arms. The battlefield lay on 1,000 yards of open ground between two woods, which prevented large-scale maneuvers and thus worked to Henrys advantage. At 11 a.m. on October 25, the battle commenced. The English stood their ground as French knights, weighed down by their heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield. The French were met by a furious bombardment of artillery from the English archers, who wielded innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards. French cavalrymen tried and failed to overwhelm the English positions, but the archers were protected by a line of pointed stakes. As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French. Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. With odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history. After further conquests in France, Henry V was recognized in 1420 as heir to the French throne and the regent of France. He was at the height of his powers but died just two years later of camp fever near Paris. 7 - 1854 - Charge of the Light Brigade - In an event alternately described as one of the most heroic or disastrous episodes in British military history, Lord James Cardigan leads a charge of the Light Brigade cavalry against well-defended Russian artillery during the Crimean War. The British were winning the Battle of Balaclava when Cardigan received his order to attack the Russians. His cavalry gallantly charged down the valley and were decimated by the heavy Russian guns, suffering 40 percent casualties. It was later revealed that the order was the result of confusion and was not given intentionally. Lord Cardigan, who survived the battle, was hailed as a national hero in Britain. 8 - 1929 - Presidential - During the Teapot Dome scandal, Albert B. Fall, who served as secretary of the interior in President Warren G. Hardings cabinet, is found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office. Fall was the first individual to be convicted of a crime committed while a presidential cabinet member. As a member of President Hardings corruption-ridden cabinet in the early 1920s, Hall accepted a $100,000 interest-free loan from Edward Doheny of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, who wanted Fall to grant his firm a valuable oil lease in the Elk Hills naval oil reserve in California. The site, along with the Teapot Dome naval oil reserve in Wyoming, had been previously transferred to the Department of the Interior on the urging of Fall, who evidently realized the personal gains he could achieve by leasing the land to private corporations. In October 1923, the Senate Public Lands Committee launched an investigation that revealed not only the $100,000 bribe that Fall received from Doheny but also that Harry Sinclair, president of Mammoth Oil, had given him some $300,000 in government bonds and cash in exchange for use of the Teapot Dome oil reserve in Wyoming. In 1927, the oil fields were restored to the U.S. government by a Supreme Court decision. Two years later, Fall was convicted of bribery and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $100,000. Doheny escaped conviction, but Sinclair was imprisoned for contempt of Congress and jury tampering. 9 - 1972 - Vietnam War - The White House orders a suspension of bombing above the 20th parallel as a signal of U.S. approval of recent North Vietnamese concessions at the secret peace talks in Paris. According to Nixon administration officials, the principal obstacle to a cease-fire was in Saigon. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu broadcast a denunciation of the cease-fire treaty, calling all peace proposals discussed by Kissinger and Hanoi in Paris unacceptable, and urged his troops to wipe out Communist presence in the South quickly and mercilessly. Thieu feared the peace treaty because it did not address the 160,000 North Vietnamese troops that were currently in South Vietnam. Ultimately, he would sign the accords, but only after repeated promises by President Nixon that he would come to the aid of South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese violated the terms of the agreement. However, the Watergate scandal erupted and Nixon was forced to resign. His successor could not make good Nixons promises and the South Vietnamese government fell in 1975. 10 - 1973 - Vietnam War - President Nixon vetoes the War Powers Resolution, which would limit presidential power to commit armed forces abroad without Congressional approval. The bill, introduced by Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, required the president to report to Congress within 48 hours after commitment of armed forces to foreign combat and limited to 60 days the time they could stay there without Congressional approval. The legislation was an attempt by Congress to regain control of the power to make war. Nixon claimed that the bill imposed unconstitutional and dangerous restrictions on presidential authority. Nevertheless, Congress passed the law over Nixons veto on November 7, 1973. Also on this day: U.S. intelligence officials report that since the cease-fire, North Vietnamese military presence in South Vietnam had been built up by 70,000 troops, 400 tanks, at least 200 artillery pieces, 15 anti-aircraft artillery, and 12 airfields. Intelligence reports also indicated that an all-weather road from North Vietnam to Tay Ninh province to the north of Saigon had been almost completed. The cease-fire had gone into effect on January 27 at midnight as part of the Paris Peace Accords. The provisions of the cease-fire left over 100,000 Communist troops in South Vietnam. The build-up of these forces did not bode well for the South Vietnamese because the fighting had continued after only a momentary lull when the cease-fire was instituted. Congress was cutting U.S. military aid to South Vietnam while the North Vietnamese forces in the south grew stronger. 11 - 1916 - World War One - French troops rejoice after recapturing Fort Douaumont, the preeminent fortress guarding the city of Verdun, under siege by the German army since the previous February. In February 1916, the walls of Verdun were defended by some 500,000 men stationed in two principal fortresses, Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. The Germans, commanded by Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, sent 1 million men against the city, hoping for a decisive victory on the Western Front that would push the Allies towards an armistice. The first shot was fired on the morning of February 21, and the Germans proceeded quickly from there, overrunning two lines of French trenches and pushing the defenders back to the walls of the city itself. Fort Douaumont was a massive structure, protected by two layers of concrete over a meter thick, and surrounded by a seven-meter-deep moat and 30 meters of barbed wire. Its fall to the Germans on February 25 became an early turning point in the struggle at Verdun. From then on, Verdun became a symbolic cause the French command could not abandon: public sentiment demanded the recapture of the fortress. If the German army sought to bleed the French white, in Falkenhayn’s words, the French army, under Phillipe Petain, was equally determined that the enemy would not pass at Verdun. The battle soon settled into a bloody stalemate, and over the next 10 months, the city would see some of the fiercest and costliest fighting of World War I, with a total of over 700,000 casualties. By the summer of 1916, German resources had been stretched thinner by having to confront both a British-led offensive on the Somme River and Russia’s Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front. In July, the kaiser, frustrated by the state of things at Verdun, removed Falkenhayn and sent him to command the 9th Army in Transylvania; Paul von Hindenburg took his place. Petain had been replaced in April by Robert Nivelle, who implemented a counter-attacking strategy that enabled the French to recapture of much of their lost territory by the late fall. Chief among these French gains was the recapture of Fort Douaumont on October 24, 1916. Under a cover of fog, French forces attacked the German-occupied fort from atop nearby Souville Hill, swarming down and taking some 6,000 German prisoners by the end of that day. Douaumont is ours, wrote a French staff officer who participated in the action that day. The formidable Douaumont, which dominates with its mass, its observation points, the two shores of the Meuse, is again French. Fort Vaux likewise fell back into French hands barely a week later. Though German commanders such as Erich Ludendorff played down the impact of such local French victories, the German momentum at Verdun was indeed winding down. On December 18, 1916, Hindenburg finally called a halt to his army’s attacks at Verdun, after the French captured 11,000 German soldiers over the last three days of battle. 12 - 1944 - World War Two - During the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze (divine wind) suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides. This decision to employ suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines, was based on the failure of conventional naval and aerial engagements to stop the American offensive. Declared Japanese naval Capt. Motoharu Okamura: I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes.... There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country. The first kamikaze force was in fact composed of 24 volunteer pilots from Japans 201st Navy Air Group. The targets were U.S. escort carriers; one, the St. Lo, was struck by a A6M Zero fighter and sunk in less than an hour, killing 100 Americans. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in the gulf battle-taking down 34 ships. For their kamikaze raids, the Japanese employed both conventional aircraft and specially designed planes, called Ohka (cherry blossom) by the Japanese, but Baka (fool) by the Americans, who saw them as acts of desperation. The Baka was a rocket-powered plane that was carried toward its target attached to the belly of a bomber. All told, more than 1,321 Japanese aircraft crash-dived their planes into Allied warships during the war, desperate efforts to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific. While approximately 3,000 Americans and Brits died because of these attacks, the damage done did not prevent the Allied capture of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The four day Extended Yonkers Weather Forecast is: Sunday(26), mostly sunny, 0% chance of rain, 57/45; Monday(27), Sunny, 0% chance of rain, 61/49; Tuesday(28), partly cloudy, 0% chance of rain, 68/58; and Wednesday(29), partly cloudy, 20% chance of rain,70/48. The Sports Scene: MLB: Game 3 of the World Series, the Kansas City Royals edged the San Francisco Giants 3-2 to take a 2-1 series lead. Game 4 is tonight at 8 PM on FOX. NHL Action: The Dallas Stars beat the New Jersey Devils in a shootout in Jersey 3-2, Ana 4-CBJ 1; TB 4-Wpg 2, Edm 6-Car 3, and Col 7- Van 3. Tonights action: the New York Rangers skate in Montreal against the Canadians at 7 PM on MSG, the Ottawa Senators will host the New Jersey Devils at & PM on MSG Plus 2, the New York Islanders host the Dallas Stars at 7 PM on MSG Plus, Buf at SJ, Bos at Tor, Det at Phi, Chi at StL, Pit at Nas, TB at Min, Fla at Ari, and Was at Cgy. NBA Pre-season Action: The New York Knicks lost to the Raptors 83-80 in Toronto, Dal 117-Orl 92, Min 113-Chi 112, Mia 104-Mem 98, Hou 96-SA 87, Phx 105-Uta 100, SAC 93-LAL 92, GSW 119-Den 112, and Por 99-LAC 89. End of the NBA Pre-season! In Military Academy Football: Navy at San Jose State, Army and Air Force have no games scheduled. Well I see the barometer has remained steady yesterday and today and so has the usual aches in my bones. I wonder what the correlation (if any) is between the two? The next few days seem like they will be enjoyable compared to the last few days. The sun did make a ate appearance yesterday, at least I seen it in Mahopac! Everybody have an immensely enjoyable weekend and as always, stay safe, PUSH, and keep smiling.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 10:23:30 +0000
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