Dearest readers:

I will shortly be leaving for scheduled surgery.

If it's not too much of a bother, PLEASE access today's expanded -- and excellent -- issue (no hyperbole!) by visiting the JWR Front Page at: JewishWorldReview.com

The "On this Day …" segment follows below.

As a "One Man Show", I will not, obviously, be able to publish tomorrow. In fact, I was advised not to publish today, either, as I've worked through the night to make sure you received today's issue. But this is what I do, and there are tens of thousands who gain daily from JWR.

Those who'd like to pray for me -- and sincerely uttered prayers, are priceless! -- can use, per tradition, my Hebrew name: Binyamin Leib ben-Peshe.

If there are no complications, I should be back publishing on Monday. (The surgery was purposely scheduled this way).

Should you finish the expanded issue, please visit JWR's "sister site", PoliticalMavens.com. It's a "mega-blog" with a Who's Who of contributors writing on, of course, politics. But also sports, movies, finance, terrorism and more. Please bookmark it if you haven't already.

(PLEASE CONTINUE READING)

A while ago, we switched our advertising model to a system where we are only paid by our ad agency -- "Ads by Google" -- when folks actually click on the ads. We did this, because the rates paid and we were told that in most instances readers would just spend the second or two each day and click on ads that are clearly identified. We made sure to put our ads at the top of all of our articles and toons pages. In other words, in a spot that can't be missed. They are even marked "Ads by Google" .

But for some reason 99% of those accessing the pages don't click on the ads.

The result has been a JWR without a staff (and why we won't be publishing tomorrow), as the ad revenue intake has been limited. I wish there was some way to change that nearly all of our advertising is running for free.

JWR is now seeking advertisers to sponsor sections. For example, companies that offer health aids or services would have their ads appear on any related article. Other ads will be area-specific (Like our Front Page).

If you want to reach an international audience that's highly educated and, for the most part, "of means", please drop me a note.

In gratitude and friendship,
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky
Editor in Chief

ON THIS DAY in ...

• 1858, Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln formally challenged Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result was seven face-to-face encounters

• 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War

• 1929, President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy

• 1943, British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own "Blitz Week"

• 1959, during the grand opening ceremony of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in a heated debate about capitalism and communism in the middle of a model kitchen set up for the fair. The so-called "kitchen debate" became one of the most famous episodes of the Cold War

• 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts -- two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon -- splashed down safely in the Pacific. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

• 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor

• 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first-ever docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union

• 1996, two bombs blamed on Tamil separatists ripped through a commuter train near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 64 civilians and wounding more than 400

• 1998, a gunman burst into the U.S. Capitol, opening fire and killing two police officers before being shot and captured. (The accused shooter, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., is being held in a federal mental facility.)

• 2002, nine coal miners were trapped in a flooded mine in western Pennsylvania; the story ended happily three days later with the rescue of all nine

• 2003, the House and Senate intelligence committees issued their final report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, citing countless blunders, oversights and miscalculations that prevented authorities from stopping the attackers