01010714 This Day In History, July 14

664: Anglo-Saxon king Eorcenberht died. Historical records state that Eorcenberht was the first king in Britain to command that religious idols be destroyed.

756: During China's An Lushan Rebellion, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty was forced to flee the capital from An Lushan's forces (see also Gog and Magog).

1223: Louis VIII became King of France after the death of his father, Philip II.

1430: Joan of Arc, after being taken prisoner by the Burgundians in May, was handed over to Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais.

1769: A Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portola established a base in California (named by the Spanish after Califia, a mythical paradise in Spanish literature).

1789: The Bastille, a fortress in Paris used to hold political prisoners, was stormed by a mob, marking the beginning of the French Revolution.

1789: Alexander Mackenzie completed his exploration to the mouth of the great river that he hoped would take him to the Pacific Ocean. It turned out to be the river later named him, the Mackenzie River of Canada. At 1,738 kilometers (1,080 miles) long, it is one of the longest rivers in the world.

1798: After the rebellion of the New England colonies, the Sedition Act was passed by the new regime. The federal law made it a high crime to incite or encourage a revolution against the revolution ("right" when we do it, "wrong" if others do the same).

1865: British climber Edward Whymper led the first team of climbers to reach the summit of the Matterhorn in the Alps at a height of 14,690 feet.

1867: Explosives manufacturer Alfred Nobel first demonstrated his invention, dynamite, at Merstham Quarry in Redhill, Surrey.

1881: U.S. frontier criminal and murderer "Billy the Kid" was shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner.

1918: The French troop-carrying liner Djemnah was sunk by a German submarine in the Mediterranean; 442 were lost.

1933: In Germany, the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler banned all opposition parties (see Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1950: The Battle of Taejon began during the Korean War.

1950: Using an Italian refugee passport provided by a Franciscan monk in Genoa, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann obtained an Argentine visa; he arrived in Argentina a month later.

1958: King Faisal of Iraq was assassinated in a coup by army officers, including one named Saddam Hussein, who established Iraq as a republic. The independent Iraqi republic lasted until 2003 when George W. Bush obliterated the country and inflicted over 1 million casualties on Iraqi men, women and children (plus tens of thousands of documented cases of rape and torture) with his false accusations of "weapons of mass destruction" and a non-existent connection to the 9-11 terrorist attacks - that were actually committed by men from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, based in Afghanistan.

1965: Mariner 4 arrived at Mars and became the first spacecraft to produce near photographs of another planet.

1976: Capital punishment was abolished in Canada.

2000: The "Bastille Day Event" - a massive solar flare caused a geomagnetic storm on Earth.

2002: French President Jacques Chirac escaped an assassination attempt during Bastille Day celebrations.