01010703 This Day In History, July 3

324: The Battle of Adrianople. Constantine I defeated Licinius (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy and A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

987: Hugh Capet was crowned King of France, beginning the Capetian dynasty that would rule France until the French Revolution in 1792.

1035: William the Conqueror became the Duke of Normandy.

1608: Samuel de Champlain established a settlement at Quebec City, the first in "New France." A few days later, Champlain learned of and thwarted a plot within his own people to end the French fur trading monopoly - to shoot Champlain and hand Quebec to the Basques or Spain.

1754: During the Seven Years War (a European and North American conflict; in North America it is commonly known as the French and Indian War), British forces under George Washington (then a loyal Major in the British Army in Virginia) surrendered Fort Necessity to the French.

1814: During the War of 1812 (1812-14), Fort Erie, Ontario was briefly captured by a U.S. invasion force. It was the last time that foreign troops occupied Canadian territory.

1844: The last known pair of Great Auks were killed.

1886: Karl Benz of Germany introduced the Benz Patent Motorwagen, the first automobile.

1928: In London, John Logie Baird transmitted the world's first color television transmission.

1940: British forces attacked and severely damaged the French fleet at its moorings at Mers-El-Kebir after the French admirals refused to sail it out of Petain's Vichy government control (which was collaborating with their Nazi conquerors). Over 1,300 French sailors were killed in the action.

1962: President Charles de Gaulle of France declared Algeria independent, ending the Algerian War of Independence against France.

1976: Israeli commandos, using 4 Hercules transports and a Boeing 707 command plane, conducted the "Raid on Entebbe" in Idi Amin's Uganda to rescue the hostages (83 of whom were Israelis threatened with death if the Israeli government did not release the 53 Palestinian terrorists it held) aboard an Air France airliner that had been hijacked shortly after takeoff from Athens airport on June 27. The terrorists and a number of Ugandan soldiers were killed; of the 104 captives rescued, 4 were killed. An Israeli officer, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of then future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) was the only Israeli military casualty (see also Israel's Wars In The Twentieth Century).

1979: The U.S. began supplying insurgent forces in Afghanistan with military equipment to fight the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (a few years later, the U.S. found itself fighting those same Afghan defenders after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan).

1987: In France, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi "butcher of Lyon," was jailed for life for wartime crimes against humanity.

1988: The U.S. missile cruiser Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf just off the coast of Iran, killing all 290 civilian passengers and crew aboard. The captain of the warship claimed that he mistook the unarmed airliner, flying on its authorized flight plan, for a hostile military aircraft.

1996: British Prime Minister John Major announced that The Stone of Scone ("The Stone of Destiny" beneath the seat of the Coronation Chair) would be returned to Scotland. The announcement came on the 700th anniversary of the 400 pound slab of reddish-grey sandstone being taken from the Scottish by Edward I in 1296 during the Wars of Independence.

2006: An asteroid passed within 432,308 kilometers / 268,624 miles of Earth (about the distance between the Earth and moon).