01010717 This Day In History, July 17

431: The Council of Ephesus adjourned. This third of the 21 ecumenical councils of the Roman Empire's Church (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy) condemned Nestorianism and Pelagianism (listen also to our Sermon Constantine's Papacy).

1203: The Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople (named after the Roman Emperor Constantine; see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy). The Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus fled into exile.

1429: During the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453) between England and France for control of the French throne, Charles VII of France was crowned the King of France at the Reims Cathedral.

1453: The Battle of Castillon took place between France and England. It marked the end of the Hundred Years War between the two countries.

1505: Twenty-one-year-old Martin Luther entered the Augustinian monastic order at Erfurt, Germany. Despite his later "protest" against Rome, Luther maintained (as do the "Protestant" churches of today) nearly all of the Church of Rome's antichrist doctrines (see Why Call Me, Lord, Lord, and Do Not The Things Which I Say?).

1762: Peter III, emperor of Russia, was killed after his abdication and arrest. He was succeeded by Catherine II.

1791: The "Massacre of the Champ de Mars" during the French Revolution. French National Guardsmen under the command of General Lafayette opened fire on a crowd at the Champ de Mars in Paris.

1890: Cecil Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony of South Africa.

1917: The British Royal Family changed its name from the German "House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" to "Windsor" because of anti-German feelings in Britain during the First World War.

1918: The Russian royal family was executed by rebels of the Bolshevik Party: Czar Nicholas, 50; his wife Alexandra (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England), 46; their son Alexei, 13; their daughters Olga, 22, Tatiana, 21, Marie, 19 and Anastasia, 17. Some historians attribute Alexandra's arrogant misrule while Nicholas was away commanding the Russian army during the First World War to the collapse of the imperial government in 1917. She had also made herself unpopular by her association with Rasputin, the infamous "mad monk," who she had hoped could treat her son Alex's hemophilia.

1918: During the First World War, the Carpathia, the ship that rescued over 700 survivors of the Titanic when it sunk in April of 1912, was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German submarine.

1944: Napalm incendiary bombs were used by U.S. bombers for the first time - on German-occupied France during the Second World War.

1944: Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel ("the Desert Fox") was severely wounded when a British fighter plane strafed his staff car after catching it out in the open in France.

1951: Prince Baudouin became the fifth king of the Belgians after his father, Leopold III, abdicated.

1998: An undersea earthquake produced a tsunami that struck Papua New Guinea, killing thousands of people and leaving thousands more missing.

1998: The International Criminal Court was established with the stated purpose to impartially prosecute individuals for "genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression." The Court has remained mostly impotent because the worst war criminal nations are also usually the most militarily powerful - despite overwhelming eyewitness and video evidence against the accused, they refuse to bring their war criminals (and therefore their nation) to justice for their atrocities. Nevertheless, God's Judgment, from which no one can hide or be protected, awaits everyone in due time (see What Happens After The Messiah Returns?).