01010716 This Day In History, July 16

622: The beginning of the Islamic calendar (see also A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

1048: Benedict IX, known as the "Boy Pope," resigned from the Papacy.

1054: The "Great Schism" began between the Western and Eastern churches of the Roman Empire (see also The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation) over rival claims of universal pre-eminence. In 1965, 911 years later, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras met to declare an end to the schism.

1212: During the Church of Rome's "Crusades" (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy), the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa ended Muslim power in Spain.

1377: The coronation of Richard II of England.

1661: The first bank notes in Europe were issued, by the Bank of Stockholm.

1774: Russia and the Ottoman Empire (listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire) signed the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war.

1790: The District of Columbia, formed from neutral swampland of the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, was established as the capital of the U.S.

1917: The Bolsheviks began an attempt to seize power in Petrograd but were defeated. Trotsky was arrested and Lenin went into hiding.

1918: Nicholas II, the last Russian czar (the Russian form of "Caesar"), was murdered together with his family and entourage by the Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg.

1931: Emperor Haile Selassie I signed the first constitution of Ethiopia.

1940: Adolf Hitler (see also Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion) ordered the preparations for the invasion of Britain. The invasion plans were later cancelled after the Royal Air Force won the "Battle of Britain" air war.

1942: Nearly 14,000 Jews were arrested in Paris as part of a Nazi roundup of the Jewish people in France.

1945: The U.S. detonated the first atomic weapon of destruction, a plutonium device named "Trinity," in the New Mexico desert.

1965: The seven-mile tunnel through Mont Blanc connecting France and Italy was opened.

1979: Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq, succeeding President Hasan al-Bakr.

1994: The fragmented Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 began 7 days of impacts on Jupiter.

1999: John F. Kennedy Jr., 38, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and his wife's sister Lauren Bessette, 35, were killed in a plane crash in the waters off Massachusetts. Investigators found that the inexperienced pilot, John Kennedy, who did not have an instrument rating, may have become disoriented in the darkness and put the small plane into a stall or spin from which he was unable to recover before crashing into the ocean.