DeSoto County Veterans Park

09/06/2026

September 6, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

125 years ago today, September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking hands at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached him and fired two shots into his chest. The president rose slightly on his toes before collapsing forward, saying “be careful how you tell my wife.”

Czolgosz moved over the president with the intent of firing a third shot but was wrestled to the ground by McKinley’s bodyguards. McKinley, still conscious, told the guards not to hurt his assailant. Other presidential attendants rushed McKinley to the hospital where they found two bullet wounds: one bullet had superficially punctured his sternum and the other had dangerously entered his abdomen. He was rushed into surgery and seemed to be on the mend by September 12. Later that day, however, the president’s condition worsened rapidly, and, on September 14, McKinley died from gangrene that had gone undetected in the internal wound. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was immediately sworn in as president.

Czolgosz, a Polish immigrant, grew up in Detroit and had worked as a child laborer in a steel mill. As a young adult, he gravitated toward socialist and anarchist ideology. He claimed to have killed McKinley because he was the head of what Czolgosz thought was a corrupt government. Czolgosz was convicted and executed in an electric chair on October 29, 1901. The unrepentant killer’s last words were “I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people, the working people.” His electrocution was allegedly filmed by Thomas Edison.

On September 16, after receiving a funeral befitting a president in Washington, D.C., McKinley’s coffin was transported by train to his hometown of Canton, Ohio, for burial. God Bless to All!!

Send a message to learn more

09/05/2026

September 5, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

Here is the first of 2 events, in chronological order, that took place on this day in history.

252 years ago today, September 5, 1774, the first session of the Continental Congress convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. The meeting was held in response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights & grievances & elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams and John Jay were among the delegates.

The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the argument of “no taxation without representation,” colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.

Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which saw British tea valued at some L18,000 (British pound sterling) dumped into Boston harbor.

Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to house British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, & the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.

More than a year later, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American & French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain in 1783, the United States formally became a free and independent nation. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice God Bless to All!!

09/05/2026

September 5, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

56 years ago today, September 5, 1970, the 101st Airborne Division, in coordination with the South Vietnamese (ARVN) 1st Infantry Division, initiated Operation Jefferson Glenn in Thua Thien Province west of Hue. This operation lasted until October 1971 and was one of the last major large-scale military operations in which U.S. ground forces would take part.

President Nixon had begun his Vietnamization program in the summer of 1969; the objective was to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese forces so that they could assume responsibility for the war against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces as U.S. combat units were withdrawn and sent home. Shortly after the completion of Jefferson Glenn, the 101st Airborne began preparations to depart South Vietnam and subsequently began redeployment to the United States in March 1972. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

09/04/2026

September 4, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

108 years ago today, September 4, 1918, United States troops landed at Archangel, in northern Russia. The landing was part of an Allied intervention in the civil war raging in that country after revolution in 1917 led to the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in favor of a provisional government; the seizure of power by Vladimir Lenin and his radical socialist Bolshevik Party; and, finally, Russia’s withdrawal from participation alongside the Allies in World War I.

By the spring of 1918, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended Russia’s war effort against the Central Powers, the country was embroiled in a heated internal conflict. Supporters of the Bolsheviks, known as the Reds, faced off against the Whites, the anti-Bolshevik forces loyal to the provisional government, in a power struggle aimed at defining the future course of the Russian state. In this struggle, the leaders of Britain, France and the United States definitively favored the Whites, harboring as they did an intense fear of Lenin and his forces of radical socialism. With some hesitation, they determined to launch an intervention into the Russian civil war, aimed at defeating the Bolsheviks and installing the Whites in power again, hoping this eventuality would draw Russia back into the war against the Central Powers.

A document issued by the U.S. State Department in July 1918 set the terms by which the U.S. would participate alongside the other Allied powers in the so-called “interventions” in Russia: three infantry battalions and three companies of army engineers would be sent to Archangel to join the British troops already there. A small force would also be sent to Vladivostok, where a force of Czecho-Slovak troops bent on continuing the fight against the Central Powers had claimed the Russian city as an Allied protectorate early in July.

According to the State Department, Allied responsibilities in Russia were clear: “…Each of the associated powers has the single object of affording such aid as shall be acceptable, and only such aid as shall be acceptable, to the Russian people in their endeavor to regain control of their own affairs, their own territory, and their own destiny. ”The Allied intervention in Russia would continue throughout the end of World War I and the peace negotiations at Versailles, from which the Russian Bolsheviks were excluded.

By October 1919, White Russian forces were in full retreat in the south, and Lenin and his Bolsheviks had effectively consolidated power for their regime. Recognizing the futility of their intervention in the costly and distant conflict in Russia, Allied forces began to withdraw. By the time the American troops completed their evacuation of Vladivostok and Archangel, 174 of them had been killed in action or died of wounds incurred over the course of the intervention. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

09/03/2026

September 3, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

Here is the first of 2 events, in chronological order, that took place on this day in history.

249 years ago today, September 3, 1777, the American flag was flown in battle for the first time, during the Revolutionary War skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge, Delaware. Patriot General William Maxwell ordered the stars and stripes banner raised as a detachment of his infantry and cavalry met an advance guard of British and Hessian troops. The rebels were defeated and forced to retreat to General George Washington’s main force near Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania.

Three months before, on June 14, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”

The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white stripes. According to legend, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross designed the new canton for the Stars and Stripes, which consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the request of General George Washington. Historians have been unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.

With the entrance of new states into the United States after independence, new stripes and stars were added to represent new additions to the Union. In 1818, however, Congress enacted a law stipulating that the 13 original stripes be restored and that only stars be added to represent new states.

On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. As instructed by Congress, the U.S. flag was flown from all public buildings across the country. In the years after the first Flag Day, several states continued to observe the anniversary, and in 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, A National Day of Observance. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

Send a message to learn more

09/03/2026

September 3, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

243 years ago today, September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed officially ending the American Revolution. The participants that signed the document were representatives from the United States, Great Britain, Spain, and France.

The signing signified America’s status as a free nation, as Britain formally recognized the independence of its 13 former American colonies, and the boundaries of the new republic were agreed upon: Florida north to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River.

The events leading up to the treaty stretched back to April 1775, on a common green in Lexington, Massachusetts, when American colonists answered King George III’s refusal to grant them political and economic reform with armed revolution. On July 4, 1776, more than a year after the first volleys of the war were fired, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five difficult years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution.

In September 1782, Benjamin Franklin, along with John Adams and John Jay, began official peace negotiations with the British. The Continental Congress had originally named a five-person committee, including Franklin, Adams and Jay, along with Thomas Jefferson and Henry Laurens, to handle the talks. However, both Jefferson and Laurens missed the sessions, Jefferson had travel delays and Laurens had been captured by the British and was being held in the Tower of London. The U.S. delegation, which was distrustful of the French, opted to negotiate separately with the British.

During the talks Franklin demanded that Britain hand over Canada to the United States. This did not come to pass, but America did gain enough new territory south of the Canadian border to double its size. The United States also successfully negotiated for important fishing rights in Canadian waters and agreed, among other things, not to prevent British creditors from attempting to recover debts owed to them.

Two months later, the key details had been hammered out and on November 30, 1782, the United States and Britain signed the preliminary articles of the treaty. France signed its own preliminary peace agreement with Britain on January 20, 1783, and then in September of that year, the final treaty was signed by all three nations and Spain. The Treaty of Paris was ratified by the Continental Congress on January 14, 1784. God Bless to All!!

Send a message to learn more

09/02/2026

September 2, 2026

Here is the first of 2 events, in chronological order, that took place on this day in history.

237 years ago today, September 2, 1789, the United States Treasury Department is founded.

The institution’s roots can be traced to 1775, when America’s leaders were looking for ways to fund the Revolutionary War. Their solution–issuing cash that doubled as redeemable “bills of credit”—raised enough capital to fuel the revolution. but also led to the country’s first debt. The Continental Congress attempted to reign in the economy, even forming a pre-Constitutional version of the Treasury. Neither this move, nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which enabled the U.S. to seek loans from foreign countries, proved effective. The debt kept mounting, while war notes rapidly deflated in value.

With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the American government established a permanent Treasury Department in hopes of controlling the nation’s debt. President George Washington named his former aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, to head the new office. The former New York lawyer and staunch Federalist stepped in as Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. Hamilton soon outlined a practical plan for reviving the nation’s ailing economy: the government would pay back its $75 million war debt and thus repair its badly damaged public credit.

Hamilton had been elected to the Continental Congress from New York in 1782. He demonstrated a near-reactionary political philosophy and quickly became known as a determined proponent of a stronger national government. Hamilton published several papers with James Madison and John Jay arguing for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution that are now known as the “Federalist Papers.” As the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton established most of the centralized monetary institutions of the new nation, including the national bank, before resigning in January 1795. Hamilton then returned to the private sector and a law practice in New York City, but remained a close advisor to President Washington.

In 1800, Hamilton became embroiled in a bitter dispute when he threw his support behind President John Adams’ reelection campaign instead of presidential candidate Aaron Burr’s. After his defeat, Burr ran for governor of New York in 1804; Hamilton again opposed his candidacy. Humiliated, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Alexander Hamilton was shot in the duel and died of his wound the following day, July 12, in New York at the age of 49. God Bless to All!!

09/02/2026

September 2, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

81 years ago today, September 2, 1945, Japan formally signed their unconditional surrender officially ending WWII.

At noon on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, “we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.” The United States immediately accepted Japan’s surrender.

President Truman appointed Gen. Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers & instructed him to preside over the surrender. McArthur held off the ceremony until September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive.

On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China flew above the deck of the Missouri. For the site of Japan’s formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman’s native state.

The 20 minute ceremony began just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time when Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, as his aides wept.

Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed, declaring, “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.” Nine more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

08/29/2026

August 28, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

Meant to post this yesterday, sorry!

81 years ago yesterday, August 28, 1945, the occupation of Japan led by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, began. Japanese envoys led by Lieutenant-General Takazo Numata, Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Count Terauchi, and Rear Admiral Kaigye Chudo signed a local surrender agreement at Government House, Rangoon, Burma. This was the final step that would end WWII following the unconditional Japanese surrender signed 14 August and announced on 15 August 1945, which came after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

Send a message to learn more

08/26/2026

August 26, 2026

Hello Everyone!!

5 years ago today, August 26, 2021, a su***de bomber detonated explosives at the Abbey Gate of the Kabul Afghanistan Airport where U.S. troops were searching evacuees rushing to depart the country. Several civilians were killed as were 13 U.S. service members. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice included 11 Marines, 1 Army soldier and 1 Navy Corpsman.

Let us not forget them. They are:

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, TX.

Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, of Roseville, CA.

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, 31, of UT.

Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, CA.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, Jackson, WY.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20, of Norco, CA.

Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, of Omaha, NE.

Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25, Lawrence, MA.

Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22, Logansport, IN.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, of Wentzville, MO.

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, of Corryton, TN.

Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, OH.

May we all prove ourselves worthy of their sacrifice. God Bless to All!!

Send a message to learn more