01010924 This Day In History, September 24

768: Charlemagne (from the Latin meaning "Charles the Great") was crowned the first King of the Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine. Charlemagne was the first emperor in western Europe since the collapse of the original Roman Empire three centuries earlier. By the twelfth century, Charlemagne's kingdom grew into the end-time prophetic "Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation" (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

787: The Second Nicene Council began under Pope Adrian I. Closely allied with Roman emperor Charlemagne (see Emperors and Popes; listen also to our Sermon Constantine's Papacy), Adrian condemned supporters of iconoclasm - the opposition to the use of religious statues and images because it violated the Commandment against idolatry.

622: Muhammad completed his "hijra" from Mecca to Medina (see A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

1180: Alexius II Comnenus became Byzantine emperor at age 11 upon the death of his father Manual I Comnenus.

1332: Edward de Balliol was crowned king of Scotland at Scone after the death of 7 year old Queen Margaret. The famous Stone of Scone (pronounced "scoon") is used as the "Coronation Stone" for all new British monarchs, and was just recently returned to Scotland after 700 years in Britain.

1493: Christopher Columbus' second voyage to "America" was completed. All of the four voyages of Columbus were actually to the islands of the Caribbean Sea and southward to the coasts of Central and South America. See the map at Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy.

1545: Cardinal Albrecht died at age 55. He was the object of Martin Luther's protests concerning the sale of indulgences.

1664: The Dutch settlement of Fort Orange surrendered to the British. Renamed to honor the Duke of York and Albany, it would become Albany, New York.

1683: Jews were expelled from all French territory in "New France" (i.e. French colonies in North America).

1706: During the Great Northern War (1700-1721), the Treaty of Altanstadt was signed by Swedish king Charles XII with Augustus II the Strong, king of Poland and elector of Saxony.

1830: During the Belgian Revolution, a revolutionary committee formed the Provisional Government of Belgium (formerly the southern provinces of the Netherlands).

1852: The first engine-powered flight of a dirigible was accomplished by French inventor Henri Giffard. He flew about 27 kilometers (16.7 miles) from Paris to Trappes in a craft powered by a steam engine.

1889: The Declaration of Utrecht was signed in the Netherlands. It became the doctrinal constitution of the so-called "Old Catholic Church." Among other things, they reject the pope's leadership and clerical celibacy - but still maintain most of the anti-Bible errors of the rest of the Christian-professing world, Catholic or Protestant.

1914: During the First World War, the German Army captured St. Mihiel in the Alsace-Lorraine area between France and Germany (listen to our Sermons The Ottoman Empire and The European World Wars).

1948: Mildred Gillars, accused of being Nazi wartime radio propagandist "Axis Sally," pleaded innocent in Washington, D.C., to charges of treason.

1950: Forest fires blacked out the sun over eastern Canada and New England. A "blue moon" was seen as far away as Europe.

1950: Operation Magic Carpet - all Jews from Yemen were transported to Israel.

1956: The first transatlantic telephone cable system began operation.

1957: U.S. President Eisenhower ordered federal troops of the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, Arkansas to protect nine black students while they attended the newly-integrated high school.

1962: Riots erupted at the University of Mississippi when James Meredith was announced as the first black student at the university.

1976: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery that occurred while she was supposedly a kidnap victim.

1990: The government of the Soviet Union approved a change from communism to a market economic system.

1996: Representatives of 71 nations signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.