01011008 This Day In History, October 8

314: Roman Emperor Licinius was defeated by Constantine I at the Battle of Cibalae. Constantine went on to create the Church of Rome and many of its anti-Biblical doctrines, including "Sunday" worship from his idol Sol Invictus - "the invincible sun" (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy and Why Observe The True Sabbath?).

451: The Council of Chalcedon opened.

1604: The supernova called "Kepler's nova" was first sighted.

1690: Belgrade was retaken by the Turks (i.e. the Ottoman Empire; listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire).

1738: Turkey (i.e. the Ottoman Empire) declared war on Russia to support Poland's resistance movement against Russian occupation.

1755: The French people known as Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia by British forces who believed that they would fight for France if war broke out between "New France" and "New England." Many of the Acadian people later returned, while many others moved to, or remained in, the French colonies in Louisiana (which was named after a French king named Louis) where "Acadian" became pronounced as "Cajun."

1806: British forces who were laying siege to the French port of Boulogne used Congreve Rockets, invented by Sir William Congreve. The first British use of rocket-propelled missiles ("the rocket's red glare").

1840: King William I of Holland abdicated.

1856: Chinese police boarded the British vessel Arrow, arrested 12 Chinese crewmen on charges of piracy, and lowered the British flag. The incident led to the Second Anglo-Chinese War.

1871: The Great Fire of Chicago broke out. According to a popular legend, it was started when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern in a straw-filled barn. Over 300 people were killed, 90,000 were made homeless. Damage was estimated at $200 million.

1881: A typhoon and tidal wave killed 300,000 people in China and Indo-China.

1912: Montenegro's declaration of war against the Turks (i.e. the Ottoman Empire) began the first Balkan War between members of the Balkan League (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro) and the Ottoman Empire. It was one of two short conflicts in the Balkans just before the First World War. The Balkan states were victorious, and the Ottoman empire lost almost all of its European territory (to understand the connection of the Ottoman Empire to First and Second World Wars, listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1915: During the First World War, the Battle of Loos ended. Despite the loss of almost 430,000 British, French and German troops, neither side gained territory from the battle.

1939: Germany annexed western Poland after its invasion.

1942: The first west to east crossing of the Northwest Passage was completed with the arrival of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, the "Mounties") schooner St. Roch in Halifax.

1945: President Harry Truman (it was Truman that ordered the atomic bombing of the civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed over 250,000 men, women and children of those two cities) announced that U.S. atomic bomb secrets were being shared with Britain and Canada. Britain went on to develop its own nuclear arsenal soon afterward, while Canada chose (as it has to the present day) not to arm itself with nuclear weapons despite having abundant natural materials (Canadian uranium is the source for most of the U.S. and British "weapons of mass destruction" and sophisticated technology readily available that would enable their rapid production).

1967: Clement Attlee died at age 84. He was the British Labor Party leader, serving as Prime Minister 1945-1951. Attlee defeated Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War and presided over the establishment of the welfare state in Britain (nationalizing major British industries and the Bank of England). Internationally, Attlee oversaw the granting of independence to India (that also established the separate nation of Pakistan with a division of India), Burma, Ceylon, and relinquished control of Egypt and "Palestine" where Israel would be founded thanks to the British defeat of the Ottoman Empire that had controlled the land of Israel (and most of the Middle East; listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire) for centuries (see A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate).

1990: Israeli forces put down an Arab riot in Jerusalem. About 3,000 Arabs hurled stones from the Temple Mount onto thousands of Jews who were praying below at the Western Wall. The Arabs began the riot after hearing rumors that Jewish extremists were planning to march up onto the Temple Mount and lay a cornerstone for the Third Temple. The "Temple Mount Faithful" organization now gather each year during the Festival of Succoth (Tabernacles) appealing for a massive Jewish pilgrimage to reclaim control of the Temple Mount. Some call for the outright destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to clear the way for the next Temple (while a "Holy Place" must be built for the prophesied "abomination of desolation to happen, when the Ark of the Covenant is found, there will be no time to build a "Temple" - it will most likely be housed in a tent, a Tabernacle, as it was during the 40 years in the Sinai; to understand these things, see our studies The Holy Place In History And Prophecy and A History Of Jerusalem: Abomination Of Desolation).

1998: The U.S. House of Representatives voted to begin an impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton's activities regarding Monica Lewinsky and numerous other matters.

2001: U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the "Office of Homeland Security."