01010719 This Day In History, July 19

484: Leontius, a usurper, was crowned Eastern Roman emperor at Tarsus (today in Turkey; Tarsus is known in the Bible as the birthplace of the apostle Paul). Leontius was recognized in Antioch and made it his capital (see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars; also Whatever Happened To Those Romans?).

711: The Battle of Guadalete during the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeated the Visigoths led by King Roderic.

1333: During the Wars of Scottish Independence, the English won a decisive victory over the Scots at the Battle of Halidon Hill.

1525: The Catholic princes of Germany formed the Dessau League to fight against the Reformation (see also The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

1533: The first reported autopsy in the New World was performed in Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. Its purpose was religious - to determine whether a set of Siamese twins had one "soul" or two, so that the priest would know how many postmortem baptisms to perform. Two "souls" were found, and two baptisms were performed (see What Does The Bible Really Say About Your Soul? and Why Isn't Infant Baptism Valid?).

1544: The first Siege of Boulogne began during the Italian War of 1542.

1545: The Tudor warship Mary Rose sank off Portsmouth, England. In 1982 the wreck was salvaged by archaeologists.

1553: Lady Jane Grey was deposed after only nine days; Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen of England.

1588: The Spanish Armada was first sighted, off Cornwall. In Spanish "Armada Invencible," it had been sent by Philip II of Spain to assist in an invasion of Britain by Spanish army troops from the Netherlands to force the British back under Roman Catholic rule. The Spanish fleet consisted of 130 ships with about 8,000 sailors and 19,000 infantry and marines. The English navy, with battle commanders such as Francis Drake, John Hawkins and Martin Frobisher, obliterated it.

1692: 5 Massachusetts women were hanged for witchcraft. 15 young girls in Salem accused 150 citizens in the area with witchcraft during that year (see also What Is Sorcery?).

1701: Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy signed the Nanfan Treaty; it ceded a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.

1799: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet with hieroglyphic translations into Greek, was found in Egypt (see also The Word Of God In The Tongues Of Man).

1870: France declared war on Prussia, beginning the Franco-Prussian war.

1877: The first Wimbledon tennis final was played.

1941: Winston Churchill introduced his "V for Victory" campaign which rapidly spread through Europe. The BBC took the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which matched the dot-dot-dot-dash Morse code for the letter V, and played it before news bulletins (see also A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate, A History Of Jerusalem: Zionism and A History Of Jerusalem: War And Peace).

1942: During the Second World War, German U-boats ("underwater boats" i.e. attack submarines) were withdrawn from positions off the eastern coast of North America due to highly effective U.S. and Canadian anti-submarine countermeasures.

1979: Sandinista rebels overthrew the U.S.-sponsored dictator regime of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.

1980: The 22nd Olympics opened in Moscow with more than 45 nations boycotting the games in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1985: Christa McAuliffe was chosen as the first schoolteacher to fly in the space shuttle. She was later killed along with the other astronauts in a failed launch of the Challenger.

1997 During "The Troubles," the Provisional Irish Republican Army terrorist organization resumed a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign of bombings, shootings and assassinations against the democratically elected British government in Northern Ireland.