C. F. W. Walther

558 In Constantinople the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapsed. Justinian I immediately ordered the dome rebuilt.

1274 The Second Council of Lyon convened under Gregory X (ca. 1210–1276).

1523 Franz von Sickingen, who championed the Reformation by force of arms, died (b. 2 March 1481).

1530 Louis I de Bourbon, prince of Condé, the first great leader of the Huguenots (French Protestants), was born (d. 13 March 1569).

1570 The Conference of Zerbst began in an effort to develop the Formula of Concord.

1577 Puritan meetings were forbidden by Elizabeth I of England.

1605 Russian prelate Nikon, patriarch of Moscow and the head of the Russian Church, was born in Valdemanovo (d. 17 August 1681).

1684 Tobias Clausnitzer, hymnist, died in Weiden, Germany (b. 2 February 1619, Sweden).

1775 Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel, composer, died (b. 18 September 1697, Nürnberg).

1794 The worship of a “supreme being,” a deist god, was declared in France by revolutionaries.

1797 Charles Philip Krauth, American Lutheran theologian and educator, was born in New Goshenhoppen, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (d. 30 May 1867).

1833 Johannes Brahms, celebrated German composer and pianist, was born in Hamburg (d. 3 April 1897).

1839 Elisha A. Hoffman, American clergyman in the Evangelical Church, was born in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania (d. 25 November 1929, Chicago, Illinois).

1840 Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer, was born in Votkinsk, Russia (d. 6 November 1893).

1851 Karl Gustav Adolf von Harnack, German Lutheran Church historian and theologian, was born in Dorpat, Livonia (modern Estonia) (d. 10 June 1930).

1889 Anna Bernardine Dorothy Hoppe, hymnist and hymn translator, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (d. 2 August 1941, Milwaukee).

1899 Adolf F. Meyer was born in Winfield, Kansas, and graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis). From 1923 to 1967 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau of New York City. Also, from 1926 to 1948 he served as the chairman of the LCMS’s “press committee.” He died 6 July 1988 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

1900 Richard S. Willis, American music scholar and composer, died in Detroit, Michigan (b. 10 February 1819, Boston, Massachusetts).

1901 Otto P. Kretzmann, professor at Concordia Theological Seminary (Springfield, Illinois) and president of Valparaiso University, was born in Stamford, Connecticut (d. 14 September 1975).

1979 Walter F. Troeger, president of the Southern California District of the Missouri Synod, died in Santa Monica, California (b. 4 November 1890, Lutherville, Arkansas). He graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1913 and served parishes in Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, California. He was district president from 1942 to 1948.

1999 Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) traveled to Romania, becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.

2007 An Israeli team of archaeologists of the Hebrew University led by Ehud Netzer, announced they had discovered the tomb of Herod the Great. The site is located at the exact location given by Flavius Josephus, atop of tunnels and water pools at a flattened desert site halfway up the hill to Herodium, 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem.