On this Day
October 14
• In 1896, the star of the silents, Lillian Gish, was born in Springfield, Ohio. She made her stage debut at five and worked alongside the infant Mary Pickford, who later introduced her to the movies. She started in the silents, and although she adapted well to sound, changing fashions and contractual difficulties caused her to leave Hollywood, “an antique at 32.” In 1978 she appeared in a new movie for the first time in ten years – Robert Altman’s “The Wedding.” When she asked why she did it, she said Altman had told her she’d die in it, and it would be amusing, she added, “Now, I’ve died lots of times in movies… but never had it been amusing, so I signed.”
• In 1947, man broke the sound barrier 42,000 feet above Edwards Airbase in California. The supersonic craft, a Bell XS-1 experimental rocket plane, had been carried aloft under the belly of a Boeing B-29 “Superfortress.” At 5,000 feet its pilot, wartime air ace Chuck Yeager, had climbed through the B-29’s bomb doors and into the little plane – called “Glamorous Glennis” after his wife. The order was given to drop, the rockets fired, and he accelerated to a speed of 670 miles an hour – Mach 1.015. He hadn’t actually told the real Glennis what he was going to do that day, and it was only when it was all over that another officer told her that she was married to the world’s first supersonic man.
— from Today’s the Day! By Jeremy Beadle
In Christian history
• In 1922, in Detroit, the Evangelical Association and the United Evangelical Church merged to form the Evangelical Church, with a combined membership of 260,000.
— from This Day in Christian History By William D. Blake
In the Philippines
• In 1943, the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic was inaugurated and Jose P. Laurel Sr. was sworn in as President. Jose Yulo, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, administered the oath to Laurel. Generals Emilio Aguinaldo and Artemio Ricarte hoisted the flag, publicly displayed for the first time since April 1942 when the Japanese had prohibited its flying. Bishop Guerrero pronounced an Invocation. Laurel delivered an ”Inaugural Address” followed by 21-gun salute and about five minutes of church-bell ringing. Following the inauguration, in the afternoon of this day, the Japan-Philippine Pact of Alliance, providing for political, economic as well as military cooperation between Japan and the Philippines, was signed by the Laurel administration. Laurel held office until the surrender of Japan to the United States in 1945. Laurel’s prewar close relationship with Japanese officials placed him in a good position to interact with the Japanese occupation forces. Filipinos suffered greatly from Japanese brutality, including loss of lives and monstrous physical destruction by the time the war was over. An estimated one million Filipinos had been killed, and Manila was extensively damaged. The Filipinos continued fighting until Japan signed the terms of surrender to the United States on September 2, 1945 on board the battleship Missouri at Tokyo Bay. The Japanese had suffered over 425,000 dead in the Philippines.
— www.kahimyang.info
Feelings are like clouds constantly moving; sometimes they’re there, sometimes they’re not there.
— Like Clouds, Por Vida The Freeman Lifestyle, February 15, 2015