Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs
1274 Thomas Aquinas (b. ca. 1225), greatest philosopher and theologian of the Medieval church, died.
1530 Pope Clement VII (1478–1534) rejected Henry VIII’s (1491–1547) request to divorce Catherine of Aragon.
1638 Colonial churchwoman Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) and nineteen other exiles from Massachusetts Bay Colony settled in Rhode Island at the site of modern Portsmouth.
1742 Birgitte Katerine Boye, Danish hymnist, was born in Gentofte, Denmark (d. 17 October 1824).
1782 Ohio Territory militiamen began a two-day massacre of the Moravian-founded Indian settlement of Gnadenhutten (modern New Philadelphia, Ohio).
1783 Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, composer, was born at Sulza, Thuringia (d. 27 August 1846, Halle).
1804 The British and Foreign Bible Society was organized.
1823 William Ward, English Baptist missionary to India and a printer, died (b. 20 October 1769, Derby, England).
1825 Alfred Edersheim, English biblical scholar, was born in Vienna, Austria (d. 16 March 1889).
1833 Theodor Christlieb, theologian, was born at Birkenfeld, Wuerttemberg (d. 15 August 1889, Bonn). [German Wikipedia article]
1835 Thomas Rawson Taylor, hymnist, died at Airedale, England (b. 9 May 1807, Ossett, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, England).
1836 James Mills Thoburn, missionary to India, was born in Saint Clairsville, Ohio (d. 28 November 1922).
1863 Edward Osler, hymnist, died (b. 31 January 1798, Falmouth, Cornwall, England).
1864 Charles Armand Miller, Lutheran pastor in the eastern United States, was born in Sheperdstown, West Virginia (d.
10 September 1917).
1867 Peter Cameron Scott, American pioneer missionary and founder of the African Inland Mission, was born (d. 8 December 1896).
1875 John William Carl Janzow, president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia, was born in Lewiston, Minnesota (d. 20 July 1949).
1877 Christian Keysser, Lutheran missionary to New Guinea, was born in Geroldsgruen, Bavaria, Germany (d. 14 December 1961).
1881 Marmaduke Nathaniel Carter, an African American LCMS pastor in Chicago, was born in Hanover Court, Virginia (d. 14 October 1961).
1887 Paul Louis Dannenfeldt, chairman of the Missouri Synod’s Armed Forces Commission, was born in Bennett, Nebraska (d. 14 August 1971).
1899 Wilhelm Heinrich Berkemeier, Lutheran missionary to immigrants, died (b. 18 October 1820).
1909 James William Richard, Reformation historian, died (b. 14 February 1843 near Winchester, Virginia).
1964 At a Roman parish church, Pope Paul VI (1897–1978) celebrated mass in Italian instead of Latin, implementing one of the most significant changes of the Second Vatican Council-worship in the vernacular.