01010619 This Day In History, June 19

325: The month-long Council of Nicea closed. Known as the first ecumenical council in the history of Emperor Constantine's Church of Rome (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy and A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad), it formulated the Nicene Creed and established the method for calculating their "Easter."

1179: The Battle of Kalvskinnet, at Nidaros, Norway. Earl Erling Skakke (the father of Magnus V, who reigned as King of Norway from 1161 to 1184) was killed.

1269: King Louis IX of France ordered all Jews to wear a yellow badge in public (centuries later, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler issued the same order; see also Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1306: The forces of the Earl of Pembroke defeated the Scottish army of Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Methven.

1536: Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, was beheaded.

1566: James VI of Scotland was born. Upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, he ascended the English throne as James I. He is best remembered for authorizing the publication known today as the King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Bible (see also The Election Of Kings).

1610: French forces under Samuel de Champlain battled the Iroquois near the mouth of the Richelieu River in Quebec.

1793: The Upper Canada legislature passed an act prohibiting the importation of slaves into the colony, the first such law in the British Empire.

1816: The Battle of Seven Oaks was fought by the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

1821: The Battle of Dragasani between the Ottomans and the Greeks (listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire; see also A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate).

1850: Princess Louise of the Netherlands married Crown Prince Karl of Sweden-Norway.

1867: Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, was executed by firing squad.

1875: The Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire began.

1917: During the First World War, King George V ordered members of British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames, and to assume the name Windsor (listen also to our Sermons The European World Wars and The Balfour Declaration).

1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair at the "Sing Sing" Prison in New York after being convicted of transmitting atomic bomb secrets to Russia. Their execution had been originally scheduled for 11:00 pm on a Friday, however after an appeal by their lawyers saying that an execution during the Sabbath would offend their Jewish heritage, the Federal Government changed the execution time to 8:00 pm, about an hour before the Sabbath was to begin. According to official witnesses, while Julius Rosenberg died as expected, it was discovered that Ethel Rosenberg was still alive, so the unconscious woman was strapped back into the chair and electrocuted further until smoke from her head filled the execution chamber.

1961: Kuwait was granted independence from the United Kingdom.

1976: The Viking 1 space probe entered Martian orbit after a 10-month flight from Earth.

1991: The Soviet occupation of Hungary ended.