01011010 This Day In History, October 10

19: Germanicus, Roman general and nephew of emperor Tiberius (Tiberius was the Roman emperor at the time of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ - see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars and Whatever Happened To Those Romans?), died at age 34 from poisoning. Note that Germanicus, from which the national name Germany is based, was a Roman name. It's no coincidence that the full official name of the "Holy Roman Empire" was "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

732: Charles Martel with a force of Frankish infantry repelled an invasion of France by a force of 65,000 Saracens at the Battle of Tours.

1560: Jacob Arminius was born. The Dutch theologian's teachings brought about Arminianism (a doctrine of election based upon God's foreknowledge).

1580: After a three-day siege, the English Army beheaded 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dun an Oir, Ireland.

1733: France declared war on Austrian Emperor Charles VI after Augustus III was elected in Poland instead of the French preferred candidate Stanislav Leszczynski.

1780: The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed up to 30,000 people in the Caribbean.

1864: The "Fathers of Confederation" met at the Quebec Conference to discuss the political union of British North America. The 33 delegates from Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island passed 72 resolutions as an outline to the proposed union; these eventually formed the core of The British North America Act, the original Constitution of Canada.

1899: In South Africa, the Boer War began.

1911: The Panama Canal officially opened.

1911: Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat Sen proclaimed a republic at Wuchang (The Wuchang Uprising) and began the revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty.

1918: During the First World War, the German submarine UB-123 sank the Irish mail and passenger boat Leinster in the Irish Sea. Of the over 770 people aboard the ship, over 500 were killed.

1935: A coup by the pro-monarchy Greek Armed Forces took place in Athens. It overthrew the government of Panagis Tsaldaris and established a regency under Georgios Kondylis, thereby ending the Second Hellenic Republic.

1938: Germany completed its occupation of the Sudetenland by taking part of Czechoslovakia. It was one of the acts of aggression by Adolf Hitler (see Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion) that resulted in the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 (listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1973: U.S. Vice-President Spiro Agnew pleaded guilty in a Baltimore courtroom to tax evasion and accepting kickbacks. Agnew resigned later that day and was replaced by Gerald Ford, who then later became President after Richard Nixon resigned to avoid criminal prosecution for "Watergate" (Ford was the only man to serve as both U.S. Vice-president and President without ever being elected to either office).

1985: U.S. warplanes intercepted an Egyptian civilian airliner and forced it to land in Italy. The commandeering was executed to arrest passengers who had been responsible for the earlier hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro during which elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish-U.S. passenger Leon Klinghoffer was murdered.

1995: Israel began its West Bank pullback and freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners after a deal with the PLO ("Palestine Liberation Organization").