01011018 This Day In History, October 18

33: Agrippina died at age 47. She was the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus (the emperor who declared the census that caused the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem, as prophesied - see Does Rome Have Christ's Birth Certificate? and A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars; also Whatever Happened To Those Romans?), widow of Germanicus Caesar, the mother of emperor Gaius Caligula, and the grandmother of Nero through her daughter Agrippina (see also Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned? and Nero's Torches).

320: The Greek philosopher Pappus of Alexandria (i.e. the Greeks were then ruling Egypt - see A History Of Jerusalem: Greeks, Ptolemies, Seleucids and The Cleopatra Connection) recorded an eclipse of the sun and wrote a commentary on The Great Astronomer.

1009: The Church of Rome's "Church of the Holy Sepulchre" in Jerusalem was completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah; the foundations were cut away right down to bedrock (see A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

1016: The Danes defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Ashingdon.

1210: Pope Innocent III excommunicated German leader Otto IV (see Emperors and Popes; also What Is The Mark Of The Beast?).

1356: The Basel earthquake, the greatest recorded earthquake north of the Alps, destroyed the town of Basel, Switzerland.

1469: Isabella of Castile married Ferdinand II of Aragon, thereby uniting all of the dominions of Spain under one monarchy. They would later support the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus (see Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy for a map of where Columbus actually went).

1685: King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, thereby depriving the Protestant Huguenots of all religious and civil liberties that had been granted to them by Henry IV in 1598.

1748: The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, negotiated largely by Britain and France, with the other powers following their lead, ended the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748; also known as King George's War). The right of the Habsburg heiress, Maria Theresa, to the Austrian lands was guaranteed, but the Habsburgs were seriously weakened by the guarantee to Prussia, not a party to the treaty, of its conquest of Silesia.

1767: The Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was established. It had been surveyed 1763-1767, prior to the rebellion of the New England colonies, by English surveyors Charles Mason (who was a professional astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory near London) and Jeremiah Dixon (also an astronomer, at the Royal Society of London) to settle a boundary dispute.

1860: British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan, the imperial summer palace in Beijing, China, to the ground.

1867: The U.S. took possession of Alaska after the purchase of the territory from Russia for just over $7 million.

1871: Charles Babbage died at age 79. The British mathematician and inventor originated the principle of the modern computer; published papers on mathematics, statistics, physics and geology; assisted in the establishment of a modern postal system in England; compiled the first reliable actuarial tables; invented the speedometer and the locomotive cowcatcher; he was instrumental in the founding of the Royal Astronomical Society.

1922: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was established.

1936: To rebuild the bankrupt German economy, Germany's new leader, Adolf Hitler, announced his "Four Year Economic Plan" that would restore prosperity through the aggressive rebuilding of the German military (see Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion). Under that war-for-profit scheme, millions of civilian and military jobs would be produced by the created "need" for "defense" weapons and supplies for the endless wars that the corporate-sponsored politicians would then get the country into as a matter of "national defense." It was a national policy later known in the U.S. as the "military-industrial complex" - a term used by President, and former Army General, Dwight Eisenhower when he warned that "freedom" must not become merely a mind-control marketing-slogan for perpetual (and very profitable for weapons manufacturers) contrived wars against invented enemies (see also What Happens After The Messiah Returns?).

1967: The Soviet Genera-4 spacecraft entered the atmosphere of Venus and transmitted data back to earth before losing contact 27 km. above the surface.

1975: Statements made by Pope Paul VI in Rome to a large gathering of cardinals, bishops and plates: "the Catholic faith made Europe," "No other human force in Europe can render the service that is confided to us, promoters of the faith, to reawaken Europe's Christian soul, where its unity is rooted", "the Catholic faith is the secret of Europe's identity, and in discovering that secret, Europe will go on to perform the providential service to which God is still calling it." (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

1991: Azerbaijan declared independence from the USSR.

1997: Severe storms accompanied by high winds, heavy rain, thunder, hail and flash floods swept through Israel during Sukkot when many Israelites were camping. More than 12 people were killed, and millions of dollars of damage was done.