01010810 This Day In History, August 10

410: Alaric the Visigoth captured Rome.

757: Aethelbald, king of the Mercians from 716, died. He became a chief king of a confederation including all of the Anglo-Saxon (Saxony is in Germany; the Anglos were a tribe of the Saxons) kingdoms between the Humber River and the English Channel. By 736, he was signing himself as the "king of Britain."

955: King Otto I of Germany, the "Holy Roman Emperor" (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation), defeated the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld, ending a half-century Magyar invasions of central Europe.

1519: Ferdinand Magellan's 5 ships set sail to circumnavigate the Earth.

1557: The French army lost more than 14,000 men when they tried to block a Spanish army under Count Egmont at the Battle of Saint Quentin in the Spanish-French Wars. The Spaniards lost just 50.

1582: Russia ended its 25-year war with Poland.

1627: France's Cardinal Richelieu began the siege of the Huguenot fortress at La Rochelle with royal troops.

1675: The foundation stone of the Royal Observatory was laid at Greenwich in south London by order of King Charles II to improve knowledge of the positions of stars and thus aid navigation. John Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal.

1792: King Louis XVI of France was arrested after a mob stormed the Tuileries in Paris.

1804: Francis II became emperor of Austria-Hungary.

1846: The Smithsonian Institution was established in Washington as a center for scientific research. It was created from funds at the bequest of British scientist James Smithson.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell made the world's first "long distance" telephone call, from Brantford to Paris, Ontario, Canada, a distance of 8 miles. Bell spoke with his father, Melville, and the conversation lasted 3 hours (Daily Bible Study is written about 10 miles from the Bell Homestead in Brantford, which is now a museum).

1911: The House of Lords in Great Britain gave up its veto power, making the House of Commons the more powerful House.

1913: The Treaty of Bucharest ended the Second Balkan War.

1920: The Treaty of Sevres was signed between Turkey and the Allied powers after the First World War, relieving Turkey of much of the land ruled by the Ottoman Empire (listen to our sermons The Ottoman Empire and The European World Wars).

1954: A ground-breaking ceremony was held at Cornwall, Ontario and Massena, New York, officially starting the St. Lawrence Seaway project. Construction of the 3,790 km. waterway took 5 years and opened Canadian and U.S. ports on the Great Lakes to ocean traffic.

1961: The first use of the extremely toxic and carcinogenic defoliant "Agent Orange" (manufactured primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical) by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. By the end of the war, during which 20 million gallons of the chemical was sprayed across the country, it resulted in approximately 400,000 Vietnamese civilian deaths (apart from the thousands of U.S. troops and air crews who inadvertently poisoned themselves and their fellow troops on the ground with it) and 500,000 Vietnamese children born with severe birth defects.

1964: Pope Paul VI issued his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, which stated his willingness to "mediate" in international disputes.

1966: A daylight meteor was seen from the northern U.S. to Canada. It was the only documented case of a meteor entering the Earth's atmosphere and leaving it again.

1977: In Yonkers, New York, David Berkowitz, a 24-year-old postal employee, was arrested for the "Son of Sam" killings in the New York City.

1993: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the South Island of New Zealand.

2003: A temperature of 38.5 Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit) became the highest ever recorded in the United Kingdom - the first time over 38 C. / 100 F.

2003: Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko became the first person to marry in space. His wife was on earth, 240 miles below.