01011001 This Day In History, October 1

331 BC: Greek / Macedonian forces under Alexander the Great defeated Persian forces under Darius III at the Battle of Arbela (also known as the Battle of Gaugamela) in Assyria. Alexander's decisive victory led to the fall of the Persian Empire and the rise of the Greek Empire. The Persian and Greek empires, as well as Alexander and Darius, are all recorded and prophesied in the Bible (see The Prophet Daniel: Nebuchadnezzar's Image, Israel In History and Prophecy: Babylon and Persia and A History Of Jerusalem: Greeks, Ptolemies, Seleucids).

959: Edgar the Peaceable became king of all England.

1189: Gerard de Ridefort, grandmaster of the Knights Templar since 1184, was killed in the Siege of Acre (see also Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

1273: Rudolf of Hapsburg was elected emperor in Germany, which became officially known as "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1553: The coronation of Queen Mary I of England.

1787: Russian forces under Alexander Suvorov defeated the Turks at Kinburn.

1795: The southern provinces of the Netherlands (known today as Belgium) became part of the French Republic.

1800: Under the Treaty of San Idelfonso, Spain ceded Louisiana to France - which later sold the territory (known to history as the Louisiana Purchase) in 1803 to the U.S. for $15 million.

1814: The Congress of Vienna opened. Its purpose was to redraw Europe's political map after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte the previous spring (see also The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1818: The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle began. It lasted until November 15. It was the first of four congresses held by Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and France to discuss and take common action on European problems following the Napoleonic Wars (1800-1815).

1853: The Toronto Globe became a daily paper.

1908: Henry Ford's "Model T" Ford went on sale for the first time, with a price of $825.

1914: During the First World War, Turkey (i.e. the Ottoman Empire) closed the Dardenelles to the Allies (listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire).

1918: Arab forces, assisted by the British under T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), captured Damascus from the Ottomans (see A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate).

1936: General Francisco Franco was named head of the Nationalist government in Spain.

1938: German troops crossed into the Sudetenland following an agreement between Britain, France, Germany and Italy to avoid war over Czechoslovakia. The policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler's territorial demands ended the next year when Germany invaded Poland, thereby beginning the Second World War (see also Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1939: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his famous remark describing Soviet foreign policy as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

1945: David Ben Gurion sent a coded message to Moshe Sneh, the Haganah commander, to begin terrorist operations against British forces in "Palestine" - despite the fact that the British were lawfully there, under a UN mandate, to enable the people of Judah to become free and independent of the Muslim Ottoman Empire that had ruled the land of Israel for centuries (see Israel In History and Prophecy: Balfour Declaration; also Israel In History and Prophecy: Israel Of Judah).

1946: The first trial of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg ended, which coincided with The Day of Atonement that year on the Roman calendar (it's always the tenth day of the seventh month on the Biblical calendar). Twelve Nazi war criminals were sentenced to be hanged: Karl Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

1949: The communist Peoples Republic of China was formed with Mao Zedong as leader.

1961: The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was formed, becoming the country's first centralized military espionage organization.

1969: The British-French Concorde airliner broke the sound barrier for its first time in a test flight over France.

1974: The Watergate cover-up trial of the Nixon regime opened in Washington.

1979: The Panama Canal Zone was officially handed over to Panama after 70 years under U.S. control (despite the show of sovereignty, "independent" Panama remains a U.S. military colony).

1990: A small asteroid the size of a two-car garage and weighing about 100 tons entered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. At an estimated speed of 40,000 miles per hour (65,000 kilometers per hour) it almost instantly broke apart and exploded about 20 miles (32 kilometers) above the ocean. The blast had a force about equal to the Hiroshima atomic bomb and for a moment must have looked like a second sun in the sky. No one on earth saw it coming, or saw it explode. The only record of the event came from a military satellite that watches for unannounced rocket launches and explosions. That satellite, and others like it, have recorded an average of 9 atmospheric bursts per month since 1975, all from the entry of small asteroids.

1995: A U.S. jury found Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and 9 others guilty of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center, bomb the UN building, kill Egypt's president, and destroy vital highway tunnels in New York.