1415 Jan Hus (ca. 1370–1415) was excommunicated for heresy.

1537 Martin Luther returned to Wittenberg from Smalcald.

1733 Jacob Henkel, early American Lutheran pastor, was born (d. 14 February 1779).

1776 Johannes Reinhard, who helped organize the Ohio Synod, was born (d. 7 June 1861).

1803 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, German poet and author of “Messiah,” died (b. 2 July 1724, Quedlinburg, Germany).

1826 William Fisk Sherwin, American music scholar and chorister, was born in Buckland, Massachusetts (d. 14 April 1888, Boston).

1835 William Fiddian Moulton, biblical scholar, was born at Leek, in Staffordshire, England (d. 5 February 1898).

1835 Henry Barclay Swete, Anglican Bible scholar, was born in Bristol (d. 10 May 1917).

1841 David Livingstone (1813–1873), missionary, arrived in Cape Town, South Africa.

1865 Justus Heinrich Naumann, president of the Minnesota Synod, was born in Dresden, Germany (d. 5 February 1917).

1872 Journalist Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) and explorer-missionary David Livingstone parted company, having spent the previous five months in Africa together.

1895 Adolf Friedrich Michalk was born in Thorndale, Texas (d. 1975). He graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1919 before serving parishes in Texas and France. From 1930 to 1940 he was a circuit counselor for the Texas District. From 1940 to 1948 he was a member of the Texas District’s Board of Missions. From 1949 until 1958 he served as the vice-president of the Eglise Lutheran Libre, France.

1897 The Polish National Catholic Church of America was formally organized at Scranton, Pennsylvania.

1902 The Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectureship was established at the Yale University Divinity School in memory of the Rev. Nathaniel William Taylor (1786–1858), who was professor of systematic theology and chairman of the faculty (1822–1858).

1912 Albert L. Peace (b. 26 January 1844), English church organist, died.

1937 The first radio sermon was delivered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Professor Paul Schelp.

1937 Pope Pius XI (1857–1939) issued an encyclical against the Nazi “cult”: “Race, nation, state … all have an essential and honorable place within the secular order,” he wrote. “To abstract them, however, from the earthly scale of values and make them the supreme norm of all values, including religious ones, and divinize them with an idolatrous cult, is to be guilty of perverting and falsifying the order of things created and commanded by God.”

1946 Canadian Lutheran World Relief was organized.

1949 Robert P. Evans (b. 21 February 1918) chartered the European Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. In 1952 its name was changed to Greater Europe Mission.

1961 The New English Bible New Testament was published simultaneously by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses. The Old Testament was completed in 1970.