Good Throwback Thursday morning Yonkers there is light rain falling and the temperature is between 51 and 54 degrees, depending on your location, the wind is from the north at 15 mph, 80% humidity, the dew point is 45 degrees, the barometer is 29.7 inches and falling, and the visibility is 7 miles. Yonkers will have steady rain this morning with continuing showers in the afternoon, a high of 53 degrees with north/north-west winds at 15 to 25 mph. There is a 70% chance of rain. Cloudy skies early this evening and then partly cloudy after midnight, a slight chance of a shower throughout the evening, a low of 49 degrees with north/north-west winds at 10 to 20 mph. Sun-up occurs at 7:16 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 6:02 PM. You’ll have 10 hours and 46 minutes of available daylight. Blue Diamond, Clark County, Nevada, Population: 290. At 1:29 AM PDT Blue Diamond is fair and 66 degrees. Blue Diamond will be clear overnight, a low of 58 degrees with light and variable winds. Mainly sunny on Thursday, a high of 84 degrees with south-east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Clear Thursday night, a low around 60 degrees with light and variable winds. Iqaluit, Nunavut Territory, Canada, Population: 6,699. At 4:34 AM EDT Iqaluit has blowing snow and 23 to 24 degrees. Iqaluit will have a mix of clouds and sun today, a morning high of 20 degrees with temperatures falling into the single digits, the wind will be from the north/north-west at 15 to 25 mph. A few clouds tonight, a low around 5 degrees with north-west winds at 10 to 20 mph. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 3:39 AM CDT Dothan is clear and 46 to 47 degrees. Dothan will have clear skies overnight, a low around 45 with light and variable winds. Thursday will be generally sunny, a high around 75 degrees with north-east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Thursday night will have intermittent clouds, a low of 49 degrees with light and variable winds. Today 10/23 In HISTORY(Courtesy of the History Channel): 1 - 1777 - American Revolution - A British Royal Navy fleet of ships, trying to open up supply lines along the Delaware River and the occupying British army in Philadelphia, is bombarded by American cannon fire and artillery from Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania. Six British ships were severely damaged, including the 64-gun battleship HMS Augusta and the 20-gun sloop Merlin, which both suffered direct hits before they were run aground and subsequently destroyed. More than 60 British troops aboard the Augusta were killed, while the crewmembers aboard the Merlin abandoned ship, narrowly avoiding a similar fate. Although the American forces defending Fort Mifflin were undoubtedly victorious on October 23, 1777, the battle continued throughout the month of October and into November. With much of the fort destroyed and under continuous artillery and cannon fire, the American forces abandoned Fort Mifflin on November 16, 1777. The capture of Fort Mifflin gave the British Royal Navy near complete control of the Delaware River up to Red Bank, New Jersey. Fearing that the fall of Fort Mercer, located across the Delaware from Fort Mifflin, was imminent, Continental Army Colonel Christopher Greene ordered a full retreat off all Patriot troops from the fort and the burning of all buildings and ships to prevent their capture by the British. General Charles Cornwallis took over the evacuated fort, guaranteeing a safe winter for the British forces occupying Philadelphia, while their disheartened Continental counterparts froze at Valley Forge. 2 - 1864 - Civil War - Confederate General Sterling Prices raid on Missouri nearly turns into disaster when his army is pinned between two Union forces at Westport, Missouri, near Kansas City. Although outnumbered, Prices forces managed to slip safely away after the Battle of Westport, which was the biggest conflict west of the Mississippi River. Prices six-week raid on Missouri was intended to capture a state that had been firmly in Union hands during much of the war. Price hoped to divert attention from the East, where Confederate armies had not done well in the late summer of 1864. A blow against Northern territory could also hurt the Republicans in the fall elections, and it could raise much-needed supplies. Price entered Missouri from Arkansas in mid-September. His force moved through the state with little opposition, but Price failed to capture either St. Louis or Jefferson City. In mid-October, he turned west up the Missouri River and captured several small Federal outposts. At Byrams Ford on October 22, Prices men pushed aside a small Union force attached to General Samuel Curtiss army. The rest of Curtiss men waited at Westport to the northwest. Price also faced a threat to his rear because Yankee cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton were moving in from the southeast. In short, Union troops were converging on Price from two directions. On October 23, Price tried to fight his way out of his predicament by first attacking Curtiss troops along Brush Creek, near Westport. The Confederates enjoyed some initial success as they drove the Federals across Brush Creek, but Price did not have sufficient reserves to continue the drive. Meanwhile, Pleasontons men were attacking on the other side of the battlefield, placing Price in a dangerous position. As Pleasontons men pushed the Confederates back, Curtiss men also turned the tide on the northwestern side of the battlefield. Prices troops broke, and a mad retreat to the southwest ensued. Prices army might have been completely destroyed if the two Union forces could have coordinated pursuit. Instead, the exhausted Yankees halted, hesitant to continue the fight. Prices force was soundly defeated, though each side lost about 1,500 men. That was only about 10 percent of the Union troops, but it was 20 percent of the Rebel force. Prices men retreated into Kansas before the remnants of the force dispersed back into Texas and Oklahoma. In the end, Prices raid did little to disrupt the fall elections. 3 - 1956 - Cold War - Thousands of Hungarians erupt in protest against the Soviet presence in their nation and are met with armed resistance. Organized demonstrations by Hungarian citizens had been ongoing since June 1956, when signs of political reform in Poland raised the possibility for such changes taking place in their own nation. On October 23, however, the protests erupted into violence as students, workers, and even some soldiers demanded more democracy and freedom from what they viewed as an oppressive Soviet presence in Hungary. Hungarian leader Erno Gero, an avowed Stalinist, only succeeded in inflaming the crowds with praise for the Soviet Unions policies. Furious fighting broke out in Budapest between the protesters and Hungarian security forces and Soviet soldiers. In the next few days, hundreds of protesters in Budapest and other Hungarian cities were killed in these battles. Gero appealed for additional Soviet assistance and this was forthcoming in the form of an armored division that rolled into Budapest. Street fighting escalated in response to the Russian show of force. In an attempt to quell the disturbances, Communist Party officials in Hungary appointed Imre Nagy (who had earlier fallen out of favor with Party members) as the new premier. Nagy asked the Soviets to withdraw their troops from the capital so that he could restore order. Russian forces complied and withdrew from Budapest by November 1, but tensions remained high. 4 - 1989 - Disaster - 23 people die in a series of explosions sparked by an ethylene leak at a factory in Pasadena, Texas. The blasts, which took place at a Phillips Petroleum Company plant, were caused by inadequate safety procedures. 5 - 42 BC - Roman History - Marcus Junius Brutus, a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar, commits suicide after his defeat at the second battle of Philippi. Two years before, Brutus had joined Gaius Cassius Longinus in the plot against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, believing he was striking a blow for the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of Caesars assassination was to plunge the Roman world into a new round of civil wars, with the Republican forces of Brutus and Cassius vying for supremacy against Octavian and Mark Antony. After being defeated by Antony at a battle in Philippi, Greece, in October 42 B.C., Cassius killed himself. On October 23, Brutus army was crushed by Octavian and Antony at a second encounter at Philippi, and Brutus took his own life. Antony and Octavian soon turned against each other, and in 27 B.C. the Roman Republic was lost forever with the ascendance of Octavian as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome. 6 - 1855 - Civil War - In opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas, the Kansas Free State forces set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlaws slavery in the territory. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, the territorial governor appointed by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown. In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in Bleeding Kansas, as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war in America. 7 - 1983 - Lebanon - A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems--and a mounting body count. In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups. During the next few years, Syrian, Israeli, and United Nations interventions failed to resolve the factional fighting, and on August 20, 1982, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines was ordered to Beirut to help coordinate the Palestinian withdrawal. The Marines left Lebanese territory on September 10 but returned in strengthened numbers on September 29, following the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian militia. The next day, the first U.S. Marine to die during the mission was killed while defusing a bomb. Other Marines fell prey to snipers. On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber driving a van devastated the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Then, on October 23, a Lebanese terrorist plowed his bomb-laden truck through three guard posts, a barbed-wire fence, and into the lobby of the Marines Corps headquarters in Beirut, where he detonated a massive bomb, killing 241 marine, navy, and army personnel. The bomb, which was made of a sophisticated explosive enhanced by gas, had an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 pounds of dynamite. The identities of the embassy and barracks bombers were not determined, but they were suspected to be Shiite terrorists associated with Iran. After the barracks bombing, many questioned whether President Ronald Reagan had a solid policy aim in Lebanon. Serious questions also arose over the quality of security in the American sector of war-torn Beirut. The U.S. peacekeeping force occupied an exposed area near the airport, but for political reasons the marine commander had not been allowed to maintain a completely secure perimeter before the attack. In a national address on October 23, President Reagan vowed to keep the marines in Lebanon, but just four months later he announced the end of the American role in the peacekeeping force. On February 26, 1984, the main force of marines left Lebanon, leaving just a small contingent to guard the U.S. embassy in Beirut. 8 - 1890 - Presidential - Benjamin Harrison issues a proclamation that extends the northern boundary of Nebraska into the Dakota territory. The decree also declares that all Indian claims to Nebraska territory have been officially extinguished. Harrison was the grandson of famed Indian fighter and treaty negotiator William Henry Harrison, who served one month as president in 1841 before succumbing to illness. The proclamation brought an official end to territorial conflicts in Nebraska between Indians and white settlers that had sporadically erupted from the 1860s to the late 1880s. As white settlement increased in Nebraska after the Homestead Act of 1862 (signed by President Abraham Lincoln), tribes such as the Sioux, Fox, Omaha and Ponca were gradually forced farther north onto reservations that could not sustain a traditional tribal way of life. Many Indians died from malaria, exposure or starvation. Members of the Ponca tried to return to their ancestral homelands in Nebraska and even took their case to court in 1879. The case made national headlines and earned the tribe sympathetic supporters. Although President Chester Arthur signed a decree in 1885 that returned a tiny portion of the Poncas original lands, he stipulated that all other lands unselected by any Indian tribes would be returned to the public domain. This included portions of already established Sioux, Omaha and Ponca reservations. Harrisons proclamation of 1890 re-confirmed the boundaries of Ponca territory within the state of Nebraska and settled the rest of the disputed northern border, speeding settlement of Nebraska by whites. Federal recognition of the Ponca tribe was officially terminated in 1966. Without their status as a recognized tribe, they lost title to what little land had been left to them by Harrison. One hundred years after Harrisons proclamation, on October 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush reinstated the tribe, giving them the right to reestablish their homeland in the state of Nebraska. 9 - 1965 - Vietnam War - In action following the clash at the Plei Me Special Forces camp 30 miles southwest of Pleiku earlier in the month, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) launches Operation Silver Bayonet. U.S. troops, in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, sought to destroy North Vietnamese forces operating in Pleku Province in II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands). The operation concluded in November with a week of bitter fighting when fleeing North Vietnamese troops decided to protect an important staging area and supply base in the Ia Drang Valley. It was the bloodiest battle of the war to date. In one engagement, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry fought a desperate three-day battle at Landing Zone X-Ray with the North Vietnamese 33rd and 66th Regiments; when the fighting was over, 834 Communists lay dead on the battlefield. In an associated engagement, 500 North Vietnamese ambushed another battalion from the 1st Cavalry Division at Landing Zone Albany, wiping out almost an entire company. Reported enemy casualties for Operation Silver Bayonet totaled 1,771. U.S. casualties included 240 killed in action. 10 - 1972 - Vietnam War - Citing difficulties with South Vietnamese President Thieu, U.S. negotiators cable Hanoi requesting further negotiations in Paris over the proposed draft peace accord. Thieu felt that he was being sold out by the United States to secure a peace agreement at any terms. President Richard Nixon and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger were attempting to craft a peace agreement that would satisfy Thieu but also bring the war to an end so that the rest of U.S. forces could be disengaged. In an attempt to show good faith to the North Vietnamese, Nixon suspended the Linebacker raids against Hanoi and Haiphong that had been initiated when the North Vietnamese had launched their Easter Offensive earlier in the year. 11 - 1921 - World War One - In the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first Unknown Soldier to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I. According to the official records of the Army Graves Registration Service deposited in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, four bodies were transported to Chalons from the cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. All were great battlegrounds, and the latter two regions were the sites of two offensive operations in which American troops took a leading role in the decisive summer and fall of 1918. As the service records stated, the identity of the bodies was completely unknown: The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death. The four bodies arrived at the Hotel de Ville in Chalons-sur-Marne on October 23, 1921. At 10 o’clock the next morning, French and American officials entered a hall where the four caskets were displayed, each draped with an American flag. Sergeant Edward Younger, the man given the task of making the selection, carried a spray of white roses with which to mark the chosen casket. According to the official account, Younger entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted. Bearing the inscription An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War, the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C. 12 - 1941 - World War Two - Chief of the Soviet general staff, Georgi K. Zhukov, assumes command of Red Army operations to stop the German advance into the heart of Russia. Zhukovs military career began during World War I, when he served with the Imperial Russian Army. He then joined the Red Army in 1918, taking time off to study military science in both the Soviet Union and Germany. By the outbreak of World War II, Zhukov was commander of the Soviet forces stationed on the Manchurian border and led a counteroffensive that beat back the Japanese attack in 1939. By the time of the German invasion of Russia, Zhukov had been promoted from chief of staff of the Soviet army during the winter war against Finland, to commander in chief of the western front. It was in this capacity that he now prepared to beat back the German invaders, first from Moscow, and then from central Russia altogether. He would eventually be promoted to general and become a key player in the planning or execution of virtually every major Soviet engagement until the end of the war. Ultimately, he would represent the USSR at Germanys formal surrender and take command of the Soviet occupation of Germany. Stalins wise choice in handing so much power and responsibility to this one man was regretted only after the war, when Zhukovs popularity threatened his own. Stalin rewarded the general with obscure positions that wasted his talent and kept him out of the spotlight. Zhukov was finally made minister of defense after Stalins death in 1953 in Premier Nikita Krushchevs new government. But as the military attempted to remove itself from the iron grip of internal Communist Party politics, Zhukov, who supported autonomy for the army, began to butt heads with the premier, who wanted to keep the Red Army under the Central Committees collective thumb. Ironically, when the Presidium, the conservative (in this case, Stalinist) legislative body that opposed certain democratic reforms proposed by Krushchev, attempted to push the premier from power, it was Zhukov who flew Central Committee members to Moscow to tip the balance of power and keep Krushchevs position secure. As a reward, Zhukov was made a full member of the Presidium, the first professional soldier ever to hold such an office (it also served to have a man who proved himself loyal on a body that was otherwise hostile). But Zhukovs renewed attempt to free the army from party control resulted in his dismissal by Krushchev. Zhukov would once again be lost to public view—until Krushchevs fall from power in 1964. Zhukov would eventually win the Order of Lenin medal (1966) and publish his autobiography (1969). The four day Extended Yonkers Weather Forecast is: Friday(24), partly cloudy, 0% chance of rain, 62/47; Saturday(25), mostly sunny, 0% chance of rain, 65/51; Sunday(26), partly cloudy/windy, 0% chance of rain, 58/45; and Monday(27), sunny, 0% chance of rain, 61/45. The Sports Scene: MLB, World Series game 2, Kansas City Royals 7 - San Francisco Giants 2, the series is tied at one game apiece. Game 3 is tomorrow night in San Francisco at 8 PM on FOX. NFL Thursday Night Football, San Diego Chargers at the Denver Broncos, 8:25 PM on CBS. NHL ACTION: Phi 5-Pit 3, Edm 3-Was 2, and Ana 4-Buf 1. Tonights action: The New York Islanders will be in Boston to face the Bruins at 7 PM on MSG Plus, Pit at Det, Van at StL, Chi at Nas, Ari at Min, Car at Cgy, Buf at LA, and CBJ at SJ. In NBA Pre-season Action: The Knicks 103 - Wizards 100, the Celtics 100 - Nets 86, Hou 90-Orl 89, Tor 92-Mac 85, Mem 96-Cle 92, Min 110-Mil 91, Atl 117-SAS 107, LAL 94-Por 86, and LAC 108-Phx 105. Tonights Action: Ind at Cha, Phi at Det, and Dal at NO. I was looking at the extended forecast for Iqaluit and we are lucky! Iqaluit will not rise above 30 degrees through Nov.1 at least! We will have more enjoyable weather once this noreaster leaves some time tonight. Watch out for the slick wet leaves while driving. Its that season. Everybody remember to keep safe, PUSH, and keep smiling!
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:09:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015