01010701 This Day In History, July 1

69: The accession of Vespasian, the 9th Roman emperor (see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars). He reigned 69-79 AD, during the time that Jerusalem was destroyed, as prophesied by Jesus Christ (see What Did Jesus Christ Say About Those Stones? and A History Of Jerusalem: Titus And The Zealots).

552: The Battle of Taginae in Italy. Byzantine forces under Narses defeated the Ostrogoths.

1097: The Crusaders defeated the Ottoman Turks at Dorylaeum in the First Crusade (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy).

1535: Sir Thomas More went on trial in England for treason.

1543: England and Scotland signed the Peace of Greenwich, providing for the marriage of Prince Edward Tudor and Mary, Queen of Scots.

1569: The Union of Lublin merged Poland and Lithuania.

1596: An English fleet captured and sacked Cadiz, Spain.

1690: England's Protestant King William III defeated Roman Catholic King James II in Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.

1690: French forces defeated the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.

1770: Lexell's Comet missed the Earth by less distance than any other comet in recorded, a distance of 0.0146 astronomical unit (i.e. an astronomical unit is the distance between the earth and the sun).

1782: U.S. pirates attacked and looted Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

1798: Napoleon took Alexandria, Egypt.

1810: Louis, king of Holland, abdicated after pressure from Napoleon.

1867: The British North America Act of 1867 created the Canadian Confederation. John A. Macdonald was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada. July 1 has since then been Canada's National Holiday.

1878: The Albanian League was formed at Prizren, Serbia. The Albanian nationalist organization, initially supported by the Ottoman Turks, tried to prevent the Congress of Berlin, which was formulating a peace settlement following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, from partitioning Albania (then part of the Ottoman empire) and transferring some of its districts to Montenegro, Serbia and Greece (listen to our Sermons The Ottoman Empire and The European World Wars).

1881: The world's first international telephone call was connected, from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada to Calais, Maine.

1899: The Gideon Society (famous for placing Bibles in hotel rooms) was established in Wisconsin by 3 traveling businessmen.

1908: SOS was adopted as an international distress signal.

1919: The German Weimar Republic was proclaimed.

1942: During the Second World War, first Battle of El Alamein began in Egypt between British and Commonwealth forces and Hitler's Nazi Panzerarmee Afrika.

1958: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began nationwide television broadcasting across Canada by means of microwave relay.

1962: Algerian independence was granted after a referendum in France and Algeria. Of the 210,000 Muslim Algerians who had served in the French army, only a minority took refuge in France. Estimates vary between 30,000 and 150,000 of those who stayed behind were executed or murdered.

1982: The new Canadian Constitution was signed in Ottawa by Queen Elizabeth II.

1990: The West-German Deutschmark became the official currency of the new united Germany.

2002: The International Criminal Court was established to prosecute individuals for "genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression." The Court remains mostly impotent because most of the world's worst war criminals are found in nations that also have the largest military forces that refuse to prosecute their troops who commit rape and murder.

2007: Smoking was banned in all public indoor spaces in England.