01010715 This Day In History, July 15

1099: Middle East Muslims surrendered Jerusalem to the European armies of the First Crusade (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy and A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad). The "Christian" Crusaders then massacred thousands of Muslim men, women and children.

1207: King John of England expelled the Canterbury monks for their support of Stephen Langton.

1381: John Ball, a rebel leader in the Peasants' Revolt in England, was hanged, drawn and quartered.

1410: The Battle of Grunwald in Prussia; The king of Poland, Wladyslaw Jagiello, with an army of 39,000 Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and supported by Tartars and troops from Romanian Wallachia, defeated a force of 27,000 Teutonic Knights under the order's grand master, Ulrich von Jungingen. Despite the decisiveness of the victory (half of the Teutonic knights were killed, the rest captured), the conditions of peace were mild. The Teutonic knights agreed to withdraw from part of Lithuania and guaranteed free trade on the Vistula. The Battle of Grunwald is held in high regard in Polish history. The battle is referred to as The Battle of Tannenberg by the Germans.

1662: Charles II granted a charter to establish the Royal Society in London.

1685: The Duke of Monmouth was executed on Tower Hill in England after his army was defeated at Sedgemore.

1792: Francis II (Hapsburg) became the Holy Roman emperor (see The Holy Roman Empire).

1799: During Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, the Rosetta Stone was discovered in the Egyptian village of Rosetta (see also The Word Of God In The Tongues Of Man).

1815: Napoleon surrendered 4 weeks after Battle of Waterloo; he was then exiled as a prisoner to St. Helena.

1823: In Rome, the church known as St Paul's Outside the Walls was destroyed by a fire. Its original edifice was erected in 324 by the Roman emperor Constantine (See Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy and A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

1869: Margarine was patented in France by Hippolyte Mege Mouries.

1870: Manitoba became a Province of the Canadian Federation.

1878: The first telephone exchange in the British Empire was opened in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The principles of the telephone were invented by Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell at his home in nearby Brantford, Ontario (Daily Bible Study is written about 20 miles from the Bell Homestead which is now a museum).

1888: The volcanic eruption of Mount Bandai killed 500 people in Japan.

1918: During the First World War, the second Battle of the Marne began (see also A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate).

1944: During the Second World War, Greenwich Observatory was damaged by bombing.

1965: The Mariner IV spacecraft sent back the first close-up pictures of Mars.

1974: In Cyprus, Greek Junta-sponsored nationalists launched a coup that deposed President Makarios.

2000: Owen Maynard died at age 75. The Canadian aeronautical engineer was one of the 31 Canadian Arrow engineers who went to work for NASA on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Maynard was directly involved in the design of the lunar module that landed on the moon.