304 Vincent of Saragossa, martyr, is commemorated.

1629 Johann Tarnow, exegete, died (b. 1586, Grevesmühlen, Mecklenburg).

1711 Johann Philipp Fabricius, Lutheran missionary among the Tamil people of India, was born at Kleeberg, Germany (d. 1791).

1815 Philipp Fleischmann, who helped found and conduct the Missouri Synod teachers seminary at Milwaukee in 1855, was born in Regensburg, Bavaria (d. 11 September 1878).

1821 Georg Philipp Speckhard, first director of the Lutheran School for the Deaf (Detroit), was born in Wersau, Hesse (d. 20 November 1879).

1843 Francis Landry Patton, Presbyterian cleric and educator, was born in Warwick, Bermuda (d. 25 November 1932).

1843 Friedrich Wilhelm Blass, German philologist and grammarian, was born (d. 5 March 1907). [German Wikipedia article]

1855 Carrie Ellis Breck, American Presbyterian poet, was born in Vermont (d. 27 March 1934, Portland, Oregon).

1858 Gerhard Friedrich Bente, professor at Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) and a compiler of the Concordia Triglotta, was born in Wimmer, Hannover (d. 15 December 1930).

1859 Andrew George Voigt, theologian and educator in the Lutheran United Synod of the South, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 2 January 1933).

1872 Friedrich Reinhold Eduard Preuss (1834–1904), a professor at Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) from 1869 to 1871, was rebaptized in the Roman Catholic Church.

1876 John Bacchus Dykes, composer of sacred music and an English clergyman, died (b. 10 March 1823, Kingston-upon-Hull, England).

1882 Frederick Henry Stephen Hassold, LCMS missionary to New Zealand, was born in Huntington, Indiana (d. 6 September 1970).

1882 The Fifth Street Presbyterian Church of Troy, New York, became the first church in America to be lit by electric lights.

1899 Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) warned James Cardinal Gibbons, senior hierarch of the Catholic church in America, against the “phantom heresy” of Americanism: the attempt to adapt the traditional doctrines and practices of the church to a more independent modern world.

1913 Carl F. H. Henry, American evangelical theologian and publisher, was born (d. 7 December 2003).

1913 John Julian, hymnist, died (b. 27 January 1839). His Dictionary of Hymnology is considered a standard reference work on the subject.

1915 Anna B. Warner (b. 31 August 1827), American hymn writer, died. She wrote the familiar children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me” for a dying boy.

1922 Pope Benedict XV died (b. 21 November 1854 as Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa).

1966 William Mahler, the first Missouri Synod missionary to Brazil, died (b. 16 November 1870, Polkwitz, Germany).

1967 The Lutheran hospital at Abatan, Mountain Province, Philippines, was dedicated.

1973 The Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion in the United States, was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1976 Jean Garton, Lutherans for Life, spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast for Life in Washington, D.C.