01011026 This Day In History, October 26

901: King Alfred the Great (known as "Alfred the Great"), Saxon king of Wessex, died. An actual battlefield king, and scholar, Alfred fought the invading Danes and formed England's first navy.

1440: Gilles de Rais, French marshall who fought for Joan of Arc, was hanged for Satanism and the murders of 140 children. His crimes inspired the tale of "Bluebeard."

1640: The Treaty of Ripon was signed. It restored peace between Charles I of England and Scotland.

1776: Benjamin Franklin traveled to France to request French support for his revolution. France hypocritically agreed to arm and supply the rebellion of the New England colonies, while at the very same time tolerating no independence for its own colonies in Louisiana and elsewhere through the continent of North America. France sought only to break the military ties between Britain and New England so that France could invade and take them over for itself - a plan that wasn't carried out because of the wars started by Napoleon across Europe and into Russia that consumed the French army.

1825: The Erie Canal opened, linking southern Lake Erie to the Hudson River, and then to the Atlantic, thereby allowing the U.S. to bypass the British-controlled lower St. Lawrence (the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 by the governments of Canada and the U.S. opened ports on all of the Great Lakes to ocean shipping).

1863: The Red Cross was established in Geneva, Switzerland.

1905: Sweden and Norway signed a treaty of separation; Oscar II abdicated as king of Norway, and was replaced by Prince Charles of Denmark, who became King Haakon VII.

1918: Germany's supreme commander General Erich Ludendorff resigned in protest of the terms to which the German government agreed to for the First World War armistice. This set the stage for his later support for Adolf Hitler (see Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion) who claimed that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield, but rather was "stabbed in the back" by the politicians (listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1942: U.S. and Japanese naval forces engaged in the Battle of Santa Cruz. The Japanese suffered a greater number of ships lost, but the U.S. aircraft carrier Hornet was sunk. Beginning with the attacks on Pearl Harbor, aircraft carriers were the means of the Pacific war - an era now gone. In any war between the major military powers in the Pacific today (i.e. the U.S., Russia, China), aircraft carriers, and their entire accompanying battle groups, would be instantly destroyed by nuclear missiles.

1978: Smallpox was declared eradicated in the world.

1984: Surgeons in California transplanted a baboon heart into a 10 day old baby girl, nicknamed "Baby Fae"; she died a few days later.

1995: Israeli Mossad agents assassinated Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki at his hotel in Malta.

1994: Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty aimed at ending 46 years of conflict. Much of the territory of the present-day Kingdom of Jordan was held by the Israelite tribes who were assigned lands east of the Jordan River (see Why East And West Manasseh?).

1997: Alan Goodman, 53, was released from an Israeli prison after serving 16 years of a life sentence for a 1982 shooting spree on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in which an arab guard was killed and 8 Muslims were wounded. Upon his release, the U.S. born former Israeli soldier was deported to the U.S. (see also A Biography Of Abraham: Abrahamic Religions).

2001: – The U.S. passed the "US Patriot Act" into law (the name is an acronym or Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001").