01010808 This Day In History, August 8

1220: The Battle of Lihula. Swedish forces were routed by Estonian tribes.

1306: King Wenceslas of Poland was murdered.

1503: King James IV of Scotland married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of King Henry VII of England.

1570: King Charles IX of France signed the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots (French protestants).

1576: The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory was laid on Hven.

1588: During the Anglo-Spanish War, the Battle of Gravelines ended – stopping the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England to restore it to Papal rule (see also The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1648: Ibrahim (from the Arabic form of Abraham; see Israel In History and Prophecy: Roots and Branches and 'Raghead' Racism), the sultan of Istanbul, was thrown into prison, and later killed.

1709: Bartolomeu de Gusmao demonstrated the lifting ability of a vehicle powered by hot air to the King of Portugal in Lisbon. Despite the Church of Rome soon thereafter demanding that he discontinue his aeronautical research, Bartolomeu de Gusmao became one of the earliest pioneers of human flight.

1786: The first ascent of Mont Blanc was completed by Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard and his porter, Jacques Balmat.

1918: During the First World War (1914-1918), the Battle of Amiens began. Allied forces advanced on a 10-mile front against 20 German divisions and took 16,000 prisoners in 2 hours.

1929: The German airship Graf Zeppelin began a circumnavigation of the earth flight.

1940: The German Luftwaffe attacked Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.

1942: During the Second World War, six Germans, who were put ashore on Long Island in June, became the first saboteurs to be executed in the U.S. They were electrocuted in a District of Colombia jail.

1963: Britain's "Great Train Robbery" took place when a gang held up the Glasgow to London mail train and stole 2.6 million pounds.

1974: US President Richard Nixon announced that he was resigning for his part in the Watergate crimes committed by his regime, effective at noon the next day. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, thereafter took the very unusual step of pardoning Nixon for the crimes that he committed before he was formally charged with them (some legal experts question whether Ford himself committed obstruction of justice by pardoning someone who hadn't yet been charged with anything).

1988: U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced that a cease-fire in the eight-year-old Gulf war between Iran and Iraq was to begin on August 20.

1988: Russian troops began their retreat out of Afghanistan, 9 years after their unsuccessful invasion to fight the Taliban began (ironically, the Taliban were assisted and supplied with arms by the U.S., who later fought the same Taliban when the U.S. took its turn at invading Afghanistan).

1994: Israel and Jordan opened their first border crossing, signifying an end to 46 years of hostilities (see also Where Jacob Became Israel and Why East And West Manasseh?).

2010: During the 2010 China floods, a mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, killed over 1,400 people.