01011006 This Day In History, October 6

69 BC: The Battle of Tigranocerta. Forces of the Roman Republic (see The Politics Of Rome) defeated the army of the Kingdom of Armenia led by King Tigranes the Great.

101: The Battle of Arausio. Germanic tribes (Cimbri and Teutoni) defeated a Roman army in what is today southern France. Germany eventually became the Roman Empire (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1014: The Byzantine Emperor Basil earned the title "Slayer of Bulgers" after he ordered the blinding of 15,000 Bulgerian troops.

1520: German reformer Martin Luther published "Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church," his famous writing which attacked the entire "sacramental system" (i.e. dead works declared sacred) of the Catholic Church.

1536: English Holy Bible publisher William Tyndale was burned at the stake as a heretic after being arrested near Brussels, Belgium (see also Isaac: Rising From The Ashes).

1762: During the Seven Years' War, the Battle of Manila between Britain and Spain ended; it resulted in the British occupation of Manila for the rest of the war.

1854: In England, the Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead began. It resulted in 53 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

1866: Inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessendon, sometimes described as "the genius Canada forgot," was born, near East Bolton, Quebec. His most important invention was the wireless telephone, which preceded modern radio. He also invented the first wireless compass and the fathometer.

1908: Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed by Austria.

1928: Chiang Kai-Shek became president of the Republic of China.

1949: "Tokyo Rose," Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who broadcast Japanese propaganda to U.S. forces in the Pacific during Second World War, was sentenced in San Francisco to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine on treason charges.

1955: The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) became officially sovereign by agreement with the Soviet Union.

1973: Israel's Yom Kippur War began. On the Day of Atonement, Egypt (under Anwar Sadat) attacked Israeli southern positions on the east bank of the Suez while Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian forces simultaneously attacked Israeli northern positions on the Golan heights. Although early Arab success was soon slowed by fierce resistance by Israeli troops, U.S. President Richard Nixon, concerned that Israel would use its nuclear weapons (on the second day of the war, Israel's defense minister Moshe Dayan urged Prime Minister Golda Meir to use nuclear weapons) ordered an immediate emergency airlift of U.S. weapons to Israel. Despite winning the fourth major Israeli-Arab conflict since 1948, the cost to Israel was very high - 5,500 dead or wounded, 800 tanks lost (see A History Of Jerusalem: War And Peace).

1976: Cubana de Aviacion Flight 455 from Barbados to Jamaica was destroyed in flight by a CIA-sponsored terrorist attack. It was the deadliest terrorist airline attack in the Western Hemisphere up to that time. All 78 people aboard the Cuban airliner were killed. Most of the accused terrorists who were identified were given refuge in the U.S.

1978: Ayatollah Khomeini, a fanatical Iranian religious leader opposed to the Shah, was granted asylum in France after being expelled from Iran. Khomeini later returned to become Iran's hardline leader when the Shah was overthrown and was himself expelled from Iran. Khomeini claimed that the Shah of Iran was merely a U.S. puppet and that most U.S. diplomats in Iran were CIA agents (accusations later proven true) - claims that fueled the Iranian revolution, which included the takeover of the U.S. Embassy and "the hostage crisis."

1981: President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated at age 63 by 4 Egyptian soldiers who suddenly broke from a military parade and opened fire on the Presidential reviewing stand. Anwar Sadat had been a signer of the Camp David Peace Accord with Israel in 1978 for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

1986: A crippled Soviet nuclear submarine sank in the Atlantic Ocean about 2,000 km. east of New York after a fire and explosion aboard the sub 3 days earlier.

1995: Astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland announced the discovery of a planet orbiting 51 Pegasi, the first planet discovered orbiting a solar-type star.