328 Athanasius (ca. 293–373) was elected patriarch bishop of Alexandria.

1092 The Lincoln Cathedral in England was consecrated.

1599 Bartholomäus Ringwaldt, hymnist, died (b. 28 November 1532, Frankfurt an der Oder).

1619 The Synod of Dort, Netherlands, adjourned in the Dutch community of Dordrecht. Its decisions formed the basis of the Reformed Church in Holland.

1635 “Oh How Blest Are Ye Whose Toils Are Ended” was written by Simon Dach (1605–1659) for the funeral of Job Lepner, Burgomaster of Koenigsberg, Altstadt.

1707 Church organist Dieterich Buxtehude died (b. ca. 1637).

1760 Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, pietist hymnist, religious and social reformer and bishop of the Moravian Church, died in Herrnhut (b. 26 May 1700).

1800 John Brown, abolitionist, was born in Torrington, Connecticut (d. 2 December 1859).

1828 Andrew Murray, missionary to South Africa, was born in Graaff-Reiner, South Africa (d. 18 January 1917).

1844 William Edward Addis was born at Edinburgh (d. 1917). He was educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1866). Originally a member of the Church of England, he became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1872 at the London Oratory, serving as a parish priest of Sydenham from 1878 to 1888. In the latter year he renounced the Catholic faith and became a minister of the Australian Church, Melbourne, Australia, a non-denominational institution, where he remained until 1892 when he took a similar position at High Pavement Chapel, Nottingham. In 1899 he was appointed Old Testament lecturer at Manchester College, Oxford, and shortly afterward returned to the Church of England. The college attempted to expel him and to declare itself officially non-conformist, but the movement proved illegal, and he continued holding the position. The hostile attitude of the trustees of Manchester College prevented him from resuming his work as a priest of the Church of England. He is author of a number of volumes.

1852 The first plenary council of all Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops in the U.S. and territories was held at the Cathedral of Baltimore in Maryland.

1900 Raymond Edman, Wheaton College president, was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois. Graduating from Boston University in 1923, he served as a missionary in Ecuador until 1928 when illness forced him to return home. Earning his Ph.D. from Clark University in 1935, he taught political science at Wheaton College from 1936 to 1940. Beginning in 1940 Edman served as president of Wheaton College until he was appointed its first chancellor in 1965. He traveled widely and wrote over twenty devotional books before his death in 1967. In addition, he is remembered for the over two hundred articles he wrote and for editing the Alliance Witness.

1905 Merrill Dunlop, American sacred music chorister, was born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 15 June 2002).

1907 Kathryn Kuhlman, 20th Century American faith healer and evangelist, was born in Concordia, Missouri (d. 20 February 1976).

1910 George Brumder, Lutheran publisher and lay leader, died in Milwaukee (b. 24 May 1839, Alsace, near Strasbourg).

1911 Katherine Hankey (b. 12 January 1834), English social reformer and hymn writer, died.

1914 President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day.

1933 J. F. William Moenkemoeller, professor at Concordia College (Saint Paul, Minnesota), died (b. 9 November 1867, Westphalia, Germany).

1938 T. P. Wei, the first Missouri Synod national Chinese pastor, died.

1951 Johann Edmund Seuel, treasurer of the Missouri Synod, manager of Concordia Publishing House and a Lutheran Laymen’s League founder, died (b. 21 April 1865).

1960 Charles Rosenbury Erdman, American Presbyterian homiletics and pastoral theology professor who authored popular commentaries on books of the Bible, died (b. 1866). Ordained in 1891, Erdman served as a pastor in Pennsylvania until 1905 before becoming professor of practical theology at Princeton Seminary. He also served as president of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions from 1928 to 1940.