01011007 This Day In History, October 7

13 BC: Drusus Julius Caesar, the son of Tiberius, was born. Tiberius was the Roman Emperor at the time of the Crucifixion of the Messiah (see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars).

1571: The Battle of Lepanto, fought off Lepanto, Greece, between the fleet of the "Holy League" (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy) commanded by Don John of Austria with his 316 ships, and the Turkish fleet (listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire), commanded by Ochiali Pasha with 250 galleys. The allies (mostly Spanish, Venetian and papal ships) defeated the Turkish fleet, killing at least 25,000 Turks, destroyed 80 ships, and liberated about 10,000 "Christian" (i.e. Church of Rome) galley slaves. It was the last great confrontation between oared ships.

1691: The English Royal Charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England was issued.

1737: Waves up to 15 meters (about 50 feet) sank 15,000 small craft off the coast of India with a loss of life estimated over 250,000 people.

1763: The Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III, closing lands north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlement, and providing boundaries and terms of government for the territories Britain acquired from France under the Treaty of Paris. "New France" ceased to exist and was replaced by the much smaller province of Quebec. As a result of the treaty, the region's borders were changed to make it rectangular, centered on the St. Lawrence River; the borders no longer ran south to the Mississippi and east to Newfoundland (if they continued to so do, the border today between Canada and the U.S. would run north to south, rather than east to west).

1806: Carbon paper was patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgewood.

1826: The Convention of Akkerman, an agreement signed in Akkerman, Romania, between the Ottoman Empire and Russia in which the Ottomans accepted, under threat of war, Russian demands concerning Serbia and the Danube principalities of Moldavia and Walachia (again, listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire to understand how it led to the outbreak of the First World War - listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1840: Willem II (Willem and Wilhelm are the Dutch and German versions of the English name William) became King of the Netherlands.

1862: Royal Columbian Hospital opened as the first hospital in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

1879: Otto von Bismarck concluded a military pact with Austria-Hungary, allying the Habsburgs with the Prussian-dominated Germany; the alliance was intended to render France powerless against the Reich (Reich is the German word for Empire - see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation). Adolf Hitler later called his regime "the Third Reich" (see also Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1919: KLM, the national airline of the Netherlands, was established. It is the oldest existing airline.

1944: The Jewish revolt in Auschwitz; Jews working in a Krupp plant smuggled in explosives, which were turned into grenades and bombs by skilled Soviet POWs. They blew up Crematorium III and killed 3 SS men. 250 Jews were massacred by the guards, but 27 escaped.

1949: The German Democratic Republic (communist East Germany) was proclaimed in the Soviet sector of occupied Germany; Wilhelm Pieck was appointed President, Otto Grotewohl was appointed Prime Minister.

1959: The far side of the moon was photographed for the first time, by the Soviet Luna-3 spacecraft.

1981: Hosni Mubarak became acting president of Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat the day before.

1985: Palestinian terrorists seized control of the Achille Lauro, an Italian passenger ship carrying 440 people. They threatened to blow it up if Israel did not release 50 Palestinian prisoners. During the incident, the hijackers murdered Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly Jewish-U.S. man in a wheelchair.

1996: The Fox "News" Channel began broadcasting.

2001: The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began with bombing and special forces on the ground.