01010609 This Day In History, June 9

411 BC: A coup formed a short-lived oligarchy (a political system governed by a few people) in Athens (see also A History Of Jerusalem: Greeks, Ptolemies, Seleucids).

53: Roman Emperor Nero (see Nero's Torches) married his stepsister Claudia Octavia, the 13 year old niece of Emperor Tiberius (Tiberius was the emperor at the time of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ) and the daughter of Emperor Claudius (see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars) and Whatever Happened To Those Romans?).

62: Roman Emperor Nero had his wife Claudia Octavia executed. She was 22.

68: Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide (see also Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned?).

721: Odo, the duke of Aquitaine, defeated the Moors (the name given to the medieval Muslim occupants of Spain and southern Europe) at the Battle of Toulouse.

1534: French explorer Jacques Cartier and his crew became the first known Europeans to sail into the St. Lawrence River.

1549: The Church of England adopted The Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Thomas Cranmer.

1597: Jose de Anchieta died at age 63. The Portuguese Jesuit is considered to be the founder of national literature of Brazil, and is "credited" with helping over 1 million "Indians" (the incorrect term applied to the natives of the continents of North and South America by European explorers who thought that they were in India) to become "Christian" i.e. Roman Catholic.

1732: British General and Member of Parliament James Oglethorpe received a royal charter to form the colony of Georgia (named after King George II) on the southeast coast of North America.

1762: British forces began the siege and capture of Havana, Cuba during the Seven Years' War.

1800: During Napoleon's Italian campaign, the first Battle of Montebello was fought.

1815: The Congress of Vienna closed with the signing of the Final Act. Among its provisions, Belgium and Luxembourg united with Holland to form the Netherlands, Switzerland was neutral, East Poland ceded to Russia and its western provinces to Prussia.

1898: An agreement was signed under which Hong Kong was leased to Britain from China for a period of 99 years.

1908: King Edward VII of Britain met Czar Nicholas II of Russia on board the royal yacht anchored in the Baltic. It was the first meeting between a czar and a British monarch.

1931: Robert Goddard patented the rocket-fueled aircraft design.

1940: That day was appointed by the British as a national day of Thanksgiving to God for "the miracle of Dunkirk" a week before (see also Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy). Overcast had kept the Hitler's Luftwaffe grounded, while the normally rough and treacherous English Channel was unusually calm. People who had lived all their lives on its shore said that they had never seen the Channel so tranquil, which enabled all sorts of small civilian craft to take part in the successful evacuation of 338,000 British and allied troops - many of whom survived to return a few years later on the D Day landings at Normandy.

1959: The first submarine to carry nuclear "weapons of mass destruction," the USS George Washington, was launched.

1964: William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, died at age 85. The Canadian financial baron and statesman was one of only two people (the other was Winston Churchill) to sit in the British cabinet during both World Wars. He was Prime Minister Churchill's minister of aircraft production (Fighters: 14,200 Hurricane, 20,300 Spitfire; Bombers: 11,400 Wellington, 7,300 Lancaster, 6,100 Halifax and 7,700 Mosquito) during the Second World War (listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1967: During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria (see also Israel's Wars In The Twentieth Century).

1968: U.S. President Lyndon Johnson declared a national day of mourning after the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.

1978: An original Gutenberg Bible, one of only 21 known to exist, sold for $2.4 million in London.

1991: Mount Pinatubo, a Philippine volcano that had been dormant for 600 years, erupted.