01011029 This Day In History, October 29

539 BC: Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon. Cyrus thereafter permitted the people of Judah to return home after their prophesied 70-years exile in Babylon (see The Prophet Daniel: The Hand Writing On The Wall and Iran's Greatest Leader Was Pro-Zionist).

312: Constantine the Great entered Rome after his battle victory at the Milvian Bridge (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

437: Valentinian III, Emperor of the Western Roman, married Licinia Eudoxia, the daughter of his cousin, Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II.

969: Byzantine forces occupied Antioch Syria.

1618: Sir Walter Raleigh was executed at age 66 for treason against King James I (of the King James Bible fame). Raleigh was a writer, statesman and explorer. He is noted for introducing potatoes and tobacco to England.

1709: The First Barrier Treaty; Britain agreed to support the restoration to the United Provinces of the fortresses that it had been granted by the Treaty of Rijswijk.

1727: A severe earthquake struck northeastern North America.

1762: The Battle of Freiburg. The Austrians were defeated by the Prussians under Prince Henry. It was the only Prussian victory without Frederick II in command.

1792: Mount Hood in Oregon was named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood.

1886: The first "ticker-tape parade" took place in New York City when office workers spontaneously threw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. While most are aware that the image was a gift from the Roman-Catholic people and government of France, very few are aware that the Statue of Liberty was a deliberate, as stated by its builders, reproduction of the ancient Roman goddess Libertas, idol-worshipping Rome's "goddess of freedom." A 2,000 year-old Roman coin from 42 BC, from the era of the birth of the Roman Empire, shown below, shows Libertas (including the idol's name, the Latin Libertas, in English meaning "Lady Liberty" right on the coin); the face and the crown are identical to the Statue of Liberty.

1889: The British South Africa Company, headed by Cecil Rhodes, was granted a charter by the British government. The charter gave extensive powers over the area which later became Rhodesia.

1911: Hungarian-born U.S. newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer died at age 64. The Pulitzer Prizes are named after him.

1922: Italian King Victor Emmanuel II called on Benito Mussolini to form a government.

1923: After the fall of the Ottoman Empire (see A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate), Turkey became a republic under its first President, Kemal Ataturk.

1927: Russian archaeologist Peter Koz1off discovered the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert.

1929: Wall Street "Black Tuesday" marked the final collapse of the U.S. stock market and the beginning of the Great Depression.

1945: The first ballpoint pen went on sale, 57 years after it was patented.

1956: Israel invaded the Sinai in response to belligerent actions by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser, including refusing access of Israeli ships to the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba, and forming a unified military command with Jordan and Syria. In the brief war that followed, Israeli, British and French troops landed in the Canal Zone. By the end of the conflict, Israel had conquered the whole of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. It was the second major Israeli-Arab war since the founding of the modern state of Israel, as made possible by the British presence there after the end of the First World War (see The Balfour Declaration). Known as the Sinai War, it was code-named Operation Kadesh by the Israelis (whoever named the operation "Kadesh" was apparently unmindful of the historical reality that Kadesh was the place in the Sinai wilderness where the Israelites refused to obey the LORD and enter the promised land when they first had the opportunity to do so, and so were left to wander and die in the wilderness (see Israel In History and Prophecy: The Sinai Journey).

1957: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and a number of government members were injured when a hand grenade was thrown into Israel's Parliament, the Knesset.

1967: Expo 67, Montreal's World Fair, ended after over 50 million visitors.

1972: A "Black September" terrorist group hijacked a Lufthansa airliner as it flew over Turkey. They demanded the release of 3 of their members who were being held for the murders of Israeli athletes at the Olympics.

1999: A cyclone devastated Orissa, India.

2004: The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcast a video of Osama bin Laden in which, for the first time, he admitted direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. He claimed that he got the idea to use airliners to destroy buildings after watching U.S.-manufactured F-16 fighter aircraft of the Israeli Air Force bombing high-rise buildings in Lebanon.

2012: Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast of the U.S, killing nearly 300 people and causing about $70 billion in damage.