01010825 This Day In History, August 25

325: The Council Of Nicaea ended with the adoption of the Nicene Creed, establishing the non-Biblical Roman Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. According to the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is actually the Power of God (i.e. of The Father and the LORD God; see What Makes Physical Life Possible? and The Kingdom Of The LORD God), not an individual "person" (see A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad and Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

357: The Battle of Strasbourg. The Roman army in Gaul achieved a temporary victory over the Alemanni at Strasbourg. The Alemanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes of the upper Rhine River region. The Alemanni are still evident today as the name for Germany in a number of languages e.g. in French ("Allemagne"), Arabic ("Almanya"), Persian ("Alman"), Spanish ("Alemania), Turkish ("Almanya") and about twenty others. Germany eventually became the Roman Empire (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1560: Protestantism was formally adopted at the First General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The Scottish Parliament had already instituted a Calvinist confession of faith, declaring that the pope no longer had jurisdiction over Scotland.

1580: Spanish forces under the Duke of Alva fought the Portuguese at the Battle of Alcantara.

1609: Galileo demonstrated his newly-invented telescope to the Roman church authorities. His correct scientific discoveries (e.g. that the earth orbits the sun, not the sun orbits the earth; see also Do You Observe Christ's Sabbath Or Babylon's Sun Day?) nearly got him condemned for heresy.

1630: Portuguese forces were defeated by the Kingdom of Kandy at the Battle of Randeniwela in Sri Lanka.

1635: A hurricane hit Plymouth colony (see also Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy).

1718: The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, was founded and named in honor of the Duke of Orleans of France.

1758: The Prussian army defeated the invading Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf.

1768: English explorer and Royal Navy Captain James Cook began his first voyage to the Pacific Ocean.

1825: Uruguay declared its independence from Spain.

1830: A revolt broke out in the French-speaking provinces of the Netherlands, against union into Belgium.

1914: During the First World War (1914-1918), the library of the University of Leuven was deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts were lost.

1943: During the Second World War (listen to our Sermon The European World Wars), Louis Mountbatten of Britain was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia.

1944: During the Second World War, Paris was liberated from German occupation by Free French Forces under General Jacques LeClerc.

1978: The Church of Rome's "Shroud of Turin," which is incorrectly (see Shroud Of Turin: A Miraculous Fake?) believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, went on public display for the first time in over 40 years.

1981: The Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to "Saturn" (the pagan-god name that scientists gave to the sixth planet from the sun).

1989: The Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to "Neptune" (the pagan-god name that scientists gave to the eighth planet from the sun).

1991: Belarus became independent from the Soviet Union.

1991: Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds released the first version of what became known as Linux.

1995: A rare fireball, caused by a large meteor, passed over southern Ontario and was accidentally filmed by a CITY-TV crew in Toronto.