Good morning Yonkers its HUMP DAY! Currently on the hills it is cloudy and 60-63 degrees with north winds at 7 mph, 85% humidity, the dew point is 56 degrees, the barometer is 30.0 inches and steady, and the visibility is 10 miles. Yonkers will have showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon, a high of 66 degrees with north/north-east winds at 10 to 15 mph. There is a 40% chance of rain. Cloudy tonight with a slight chance of a rain shower, a low of 57 degrees with north/north-east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Sun-up occurs at 6:53 AM and descends gracefully beyond the Palisades at 6:36 PM. You’ll have 11 hours and 43 minutes of available daylight. Bakersfield, Kern County, California, Population: 354,480. At 1:43 AM PDT Bakersfield is clear and 73 degrees. Bakersfield will have clear skies overnight, a low of 61 degrees with light and variable winds. Mainly sunny Wednesday, a high of 88 degrees with north-west winds at 5 to 10 mph. Mostly clear Wednesday night, a low of 62 degrees with east winds at 5 to 10 mph. Bapatla, Andhra Pradesh State, India, Population: 70,777. At 2:18 PM IST Bapatla is clouds and 94 degrees.Abundant sunshine in Bapatla today, a high of 94 degrees with winds from the east/south-east at 5 to 10 mph. Clear skies tonight, a low of 76 degrees with light and variable winds. Dothan, Houston County, Alabama. At 3:54 AM CDT Dothan is mostly cloudy and 63 degrees. Dothan will have sun and clouds mixed, a high near 85 degrees with light and variable winds. Clear to partly cloudy skies tonight, a low of 67 degrees with light and variable winds. Today 10/01 In HISTORY (Courtesy of the History Channel): 1 - 1776 - American Revolution - Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris receive information that the French are going to purchase arms and ammunition in Holland and send them to the West Indies for use by the American Patriots. Meanwhile, Silas Deane, the secret congressional agent in France, wrote to Congress pleading for information, ...For Heavens sake, if you mean to have any connection with this kingdom (France), be more assiduous in getting your letters here. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775. Silas Deane, a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress, left for France on a secret mission on March 3, 1776. The Committee of Congress for Secret Correspondence, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, John Dickinson, John Hay and Robert Morris, had instructed Deane to meet with French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, to stress Americas need for military stores and assure the French that the colonies were moving toward total separation from Great Britain. Deane managed to negotiate for unofficial assistance from France, in the form of ships containing military supplies, and recruited the Marquis de Lafayette to share his military expertise with the Continental Armys officer corps. However, it was not until after the arrival of the charming Benjamin Franklin in France in December 1776 and the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that it was worth backing the Americans in a formal treaty. On February 6, 1778, the Treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which was assured after the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. 2 - 1864 - Civil War - Confederate spy Rose ONeal Greenhow drowns off the North Carolina coast when a Yankee craft runs her ship aground. She was returning from a trip to England. At the beginning of the war, Maryland native Rose ONeal Greenhow lived in Washington, D.C., with her four children. Her deceased husband was wealthy and well connected in the capital, and Greenhow used her influence to aid the Southern cause. Working with Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan, she established an elaborate spy network in Washington. The effectiveness of the operation was soon demonstrated when Greenhow received information concerning the movements of General Irvin McDowells army shortly before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. A female courier carried messages from Greenhow to Confederate General Pierre G.T. Beauregard at his Fairfax, Virginia, headquarters. Beauregard later testified that because of the gained intelligence, he requested extra troops from General Joseph Johnstons nearby command, helping the Confederates score a dramatic victory against the Yankees in the first major battle of the war. Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent Greenhow a letter of appreciation the day after the battle. Federal authorities soon learned of the security leaks, and the trail led to Greenhows residence. She was placed under house arrest, and other suspected female spies were soon arrested and joined her there. The house, nicknamed Fort Greenhow, still managed to produce information for the Rebels. When her good friend, Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson, visited Greenhow, he carelessly provided important intelligence that Greenhow slipped to her operatives. After five months, she and her youngest daughter, Little Rose, were transferred to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. She was incarcerated until June 1862, when she went into exile in the South. Greenhow and Little Rose spent the next two years in England. Greenhow penned a memoir titled My Imprisonment and traveled to England and France, drumming up support for the Southern cause. She then decided to return to the Confederacy to contribute more directly to the war effort. Greenhow and her daughter were on board the British blockade-runner Condor when it was intercepted by the U.S.S. Niphon off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The Yankee ship ran Condor aground near Forth Fischer. Greenhow was carrying Confederate dispatches and $2,000 in gold. Insisting that she be taken ashore, she boarded a small lifeboat that overturned in the rough surf. The weight of the gold pulled her under, and her body washed ashore the next morning. Greenhow was given a heros funeral and buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina, her body wrapped in the Confederate flag. 3 - 1949 - Cold War - Naming himself head of state, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong officially proclaims the existence of the Peoples Republic of China; Zhou Enlai is named premier. The proclamation was the climax of years of battle between Maos communist forces and the regime of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who had been supported with money and arms from the American government. The loss of China, the largest nation in Asia, to communism was a severe blow to the United States, which was still reeling from the Soviet Unions detonation of a nuclear device one month earlier. State Department officials in President Harry S. Trumans administration tried to prepare the American public for the worst when they released a white paper in August 1949. The report argued that Chiangs regime was so corrupt, inefficient, and unpopular that no amount of U.S. aid could save it. Nevertheless, the communist victory in China brought forth a wave of criticism from Republicans who charged that the Truman administration lost China through gross mishandling of the situation. Other Republicans, notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, went further, claiming that the State Department had gone soft on communism; more recklessly, McCarthy suggested that there were procommunist sympathizers in the department. The United States withheld recognition from the new communist government in China. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, during which communist Chinese and U.S. forces did battle, drove an even deeper wedge between the two nations. In the ensuing years, continued U.S. support of Chiangs Republic of China, which had been established on the island of Taiwan, and the refusal to seat the Peoples Republic of China at the United Nations made diplomatic relations impossible. President Richard Nixon broke the impasse with his stunning visit to communist China in February 1972. The United States extended formal diplomatic recognition in 1979. 4 - 1988 - Cold War - Having forced the resignation of Soviet leader Andrei Gromyko, Mikhail Gorbachev names himself head of the Supreme Soviet. Within two years, he was named Man of the Decade by Time magazine for his role in bringing the Cold War to a close. Beginning in 1985, when he became general secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR, Gorbachev moved forward to both liberalize the Soviet economy (perestroika) and political life (glasnost), as well as decrease tensions with the United States. By late 1991, the Soviet Union was moving toward dissolution, and Gorbachev retired from office in December 1991. 5 - 1987 - An earthquake in Whittier, California, kills 6 people and injures 100 more on this day in 1987. The quake was the largest to hit Southern California since 1971, but not nearly as damaging as the Northridge quake that would devastate parts of Los Angeles seven years later. 6 - 1936 - Spanish Civil War - During the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco is named head of the rebel Nationalist government in Spain. It would take more than two years for Franco to defeat the Republicans in the civil war and become ruler of all of Spain. He subsequently served as dictator until his death in 1975. Francisco Franco was born in El Ferrol, Spain, in 1892. The son of a naval officer, he entered the Infantry Academy at age 14. He demonstrated himself to be a disciplined soldier and talented commander in Spains colonial campaigns in Morocco. He rose in rank rapidly and was hailed as a national hero for his defeat of the Moroccan rebels in 1926. Appointed brigadier general, his promising career was temporarily halted when the Spanish monarchy fell in 1931. The liberal leaders of the new Spanish Republic were suspicious of the military, and Franco was placed on the inactive list. Although an avowed monarchist, he accepted his demotion quietly. In 1933, national elections returned the conservatives to power, and Franco was promoted to major general. In 1934, Franco quelled a revolt by socialists in the mining districts of Asturias. In 1935, he was appointed army chief of staff. In February 1936, new elections returned a leftist coalition to power, and Franco was sent to an obscure command in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. Fearing that the liberal government would give way to Marxist revolution, army officers conspired to seize power. After a period of hesitation, Franco agreed to join the military rebellion, which began in Morocco on July 17, 1936, and spread to the Spanish mainland the next day. With Nationalist army forces from Morocco, Franco rapidly overran much of the Republican-controlled areas in Spain and marched on Madrid. Believing victory was imminent, Franco was made leader of the new Nationalist regime on October 1, 1936. In fact, the bloody Spanish Civil War stretched on until the end of March 1939. In the conflict, Francos Nationalists received heavy support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, while the Republicans were aided by the USSR and international volunteers. With the surrender of Madrid on March 28, 1939, Franco formally became dictator of all of Spain--El Caudillo, The Leader in Spanish. Although he sympathized with the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, Franco maintained Spanish neutrality during World War II. After the war, he was ostracized as the last surviving fascist dictator, but international rehabilitation came with the rise of the Cold War and recognition of his anti-communist views by the United States and other Western nations. Franco secured massive U.S. economic aid in return for military bases in Spain, and the Spanish economy steadily grew. In the 1950s and 60s, Francos authoritarian regime gradually became more liberal, and there was little organized opposition to his rule outside the Basque provinces, where separatists engaged in terrorism against the Spanish government. In 1969, Franco recognized Juan Carlos, the grandson of Spains last king, as his successor as head of state and heir to the Spanish throne. In November 1975, Franco died after a long illness, and Juan Carlos became leader and king of Spain. Despite having pledged loyalty to Francos authoritarian regime, King Juan Carlos immediately began a transition to democracy. 7 - 1946 - World War Two - 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitlers former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted. The trial, which had lasted nearly 10 months, was conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace to crimes of war and crimes against humanity. On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged one by one. Hermann Goering, who at sentencing was called the leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews, committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia; he is now known to have died in Berlin at the end of the war. 8 - 1965 - A communist coup against Indonesian President Sukarno is crushed by General Mohammed Suharto, the Indonesian army chief of staff. In the aftermath, Suharto moved to replace Sukarno and launched a purge of Indonesian communists that resulted in thousands of deaths. In 1967, Suharto assumed full executive authority and in 1968 was elected president. Reelected every five years until his resignation in 1998, Suharto stabilized his nation and oversaw significant economic progress. However, he was criticized for his repressive rule and for Indonesias 1975 invasion of East Timor, which left an estimated 100,000 Timorese dead from famine, disease, and warfare. 9 - 2005 - Suicide bombers strike three restaurants in two tourist areas on the Indonesian island of Bali, a popular resort area. The bombings killed 22 people, including the bombers, and injured more than 50 others. This was the second suicide-bombing incident to rock the island in less than three years. (In 2002, a series of three bombs killed 202 people, many of them foreign nationals in Bali on vacation, including 88 Australians.) The blasts occurred nearly simultaneously, hitting two outdoor restaurants in the Jimbaran beach resort and a third in Kuta, a tourist center about 19 miles away. The attacks, like those in 2002, were thought to be the work of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an extremist Islamist militant group with links to al-Qaida. JI is also believed to be responsible for the bombing of a Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 that resulted in the deaths of 12 people and of the Australian embassy in Indonesia in 2004, in which 10 people died. Though Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world, the island of Bali is mainly Hindu. 10 - 1890 - The United States Congress decrees that about 1,500 square miles of public land in the California Sierra Nevada will be preserved forever as Yosemite National Park. 11 - 1924 - Future President James Earl Carter is born in Plains, Georgia. Carter, who preferred to be called Jimmy, was the son of a peanut farmer and was the first president to be born in a hospital. Carter was raised a devoted Southern Baptist and graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946. He married Rosalynn Smith later that year. 12 - 1961 - Vietnam War - South Vietnam requests a bilateral defense treaty with the United States. President John F. Kennedy was faced with a serious dilemma in Vietnam. The government of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon was increasingly unpopular with the South Vietnamese people because of his refusal to institute political reform and the suppression of opposing political and religious factions. However, Diem was staunchly anticommunist, which made him attractive to the American president, who was concerned about the growing strength of the Communists in Southeast Asia. The United States had taken over the fight against the Communists in Vietnam from the French, who had been defeated by the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The United States had been providing military aid to the South Vietnamese through the French since 1951. In 1955, this aid, which included American military advisers, was provided directly to the Diem government in Saigon. With the formal request for a bilateral defense treaty, the number of U.S. personnel in South Vietnam grew to more than 3,000 by the end of 1961, and the American commitment to Saigon grew steadily over the next two years. When President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, there were over 16,000 American personnel in Vietnam. Under Kennedys successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, this number would grow to more than 500,000. 13 - 1918 - World War One - At four o’clock on the morning of October 1, 1918, Max von Baden arrives in Berlin to take office as the new German chancellor, after conflict within the German military and government leadership causes his predecessor, Georg von Hertling, to resign. Although the Allies had breached the mighty Hindenburg Line—the heavily fortified defensive zone envisioned as the last line of German defenses on the Western Front—in the last days of September 1918, German forces in general continued to hold. The news that German ally Bulgaria had sought and been granted an armistice, however, caused German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff to lose his once-steely nerve. At a crown council convened by Kaiser Wilhelm II at Spa on September 29, Ludendorff demanded that the German government seek an immediate armistice based on the Fourteen Points outlined by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson the previous January. This abrupt switch by Ludendorff—who until then had claimed the German forces were far from defeat—and his direct appeal to the kaiser angered government leaders like Hertling, who arrived too late to actively participate in the meeting and promptly resigned the chancellorship. When von Baden arrived in Berlin the next morning, he made it clear that his policy was not to seek an armistice until the German army was able to reestablish its stability at the front. He argued that by suing for peace Germany would forfeit its post-war negotiating power, stating that a request for an armistice makes any peace initiative impossible. Baden, an aristocrat appointed by the kaiser, quickly implemented necessary constitutional reforms in Germany, undermining the power of the military’s Third Supreme Command—and of Ludendorff in particular—in the hopes that a more moderate and democratic Germany could negotiate more favorable armistice terms with the Allies. Despite his initial resistance, von Baden himself contacted Wilson on October 4 to seek an immediate armistice. Over the next few weeks, pressured by the leftist Social Democrats, von Baden oversaw the creation of a German republic and Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication on November 9, and then announced his own retirement, handing control to the Social Democratic leader Friedrich Ebert. 14 - 1944 - World War Two - At four o’clock on the morning of October 1, 1918, Max von Baden arrives in Berlin to take office as the new German chancellor, after conflict within the German military and government leadership causes his predecessor, Georg von Hertling, to resign. Although the Allies had breached the mighty Hindenburg Line—the heavily fortified defensive zone envisioned as the last line of German defenses on the Western Front—in the last days of September 1918, German forces in general continued to hold. The news that German ally Bulgaria had sought and been granted an armistice, however, caused German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff to lose his once-steely nerve. At a crown council convened by Kaiser Wilhelm II at Spa on September 29, Ludendorff demanded that the German government seek an immediate armistice based on the Fourteen Points outlined by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson the previous January. This abrupt switch by Ludendorff—who until then had claimed the German forces were far from defeat—and his direct appeal to the kaiser angered government leaders like Hertling, who arrived too late to actively participate in the meeting and promptly resigned the chancellorship. When von Baden arrived in Berlin the next morning, he made it clear that his policy was not to seek an armistice until the German army was able to reestablish its stability at the front. He argued that by suing for peace Germany would forfeit its post-war negotiating power, stating that a request for an armistice makes any peace initiative impossible. Baden, an aristocrat appointed by the kaiser, quickly implemented necessary constitutional reforms in Germany, undermining the power of the military’s Third Supreme Command—and of Ludendorff in particular—in the hopes that a more moderate and democratic Germany could negotiate more favorable armistice terms with the Allies. Despite his initial resistance, von Baden himself contacted Wilson on October 4 to seek an immediate armistice. Over the next few weeks, pressured by the leftist Social Democrats, von Baden oversaw the creation of a German republic and Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication on November 9, and then announced his own retirement, handing control to the Social Democratic leader Friedrich Ebert. The four day Extended Yonkers Weather Forecast is: Thursday, mostly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, 67/55; Friday, mostly sunny, 0% chance of rain, 72/60; Saturday, rain, 60% chance of rain, 66/48; and Sunday, sunny, 0% chance of rain, 63/49. In NHL action last night, the Flyers topped the rangers in Philadelphia 4-2 while the Islanders skated to a 5-3 win over the Bruins in Boston. There is no sports action scheduled for our local teams tonight. Have a superb day today as you climb over the hump to slide to the weekend and as always please keep safe, PUSH, and keep smiling!
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 09:05:21 +0000
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