ca. 340 The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea died (b. ca. 260).

727/728 Hubert, bishop of Maastricht, died (b. ca. 656658).

1416 Bohemian reformer Jerome of
Prague
(b. 1379) was burned in Constance as a heretic after defending John Huss (Jan Hus).

1431 Joan of Arc (b. ca. 1412) was burned at the stake in Rouen by the English for heresy.

1434 Taborite forces led by Prokop the Great were decisively defeated in the Battle of Lipany, effectively ending the Hussite Wars in Bohemia.

1640 Peter Paul Rubens (b. 28 June 1577), Flemish painter, died.

1650 Joachim Neander, hymnist, was born (d. 31 May 1680).

1744 Alexander Pope, hymnist, died in Twickenham (b. 21 May 1688).

1819 Anglican Bishop Reginald Heber (17831826) penned the lines to the famous missionary hymn “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”

1820 Clarence Augustus Walworth, hymn translator, was born (d. 19 September 1900).

1820 Edward Topping Doane, missionary to Micronesia, was born in Tonkinsville, Staten Island, New York (d. 15 May 1890).

1821 Samuel Newell, missionary to India, died (b. 24/25 July 1784/85).

1822 A slave betrayed the plans of an African Methodist (and former slave) Denmark Vesey (b. 1767?) to stage a massive slave uprising on 14 July. Of the 131 African Americans arrested in the plot, 35 were executed (included Vesey) and 43 were deported. Vesey’s Charleston, South Carolina, church was closed until 1865.

1827 Carl Johann August Strasen, president of the Northwestern and Wisconsin Districts of the Missouri Synod, was born in Juergenhagen, Mecklenberg-Schwerin, Germany (d. 25/26 February 1909, Milwaukee, Wisconsin).

1837 Charles William Fry, English musician, was born in Salisbury (d. 24 August 1882).

1839 The Saxon immigrants deposed Martin Stephan (17771846) as bishop in Perry County, Missouri, on charges of immorality, mal-administration and false doctrine.

1839 The first Lutheran synod was held in Australia.

1860 Theodore Emanuel Schmauk, president of the General Council, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (d. 23 March 1920).

1867 Charles Philip Krauth, professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and president of the General Synod, died (b. 7 May 1797).

1868 Memorial Day was observed for the first time under a proclamation issued by General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans organization.

1890 Henry Frederick Schuh, president of the American Lutheran Church, was born in Tacoma, Washington (d. 21 December 1965).

1907 Seminário Concórdia, Porto Alegre, Brazil, reopened. Founded on 27 October 1903 in Bom Jesus, some 150 miles from Porto Alegre, the school had been closed when the pastor/president/professor Johann Friedrich Hartmeister (18771965) had to return to the United States in 1906.

1934 The first synod of the Confessing Church of Barmen (Germany) ended after two days. Influenced by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the synod resisted the teachings of the Nazi-supporting German Christians. Written largely by the Reformed theologian Barth, the Barmen Declaration’s theme was that Jesus Christ is the true Word of God and that the church is not to recognize other powers as representing divine revelation.

1946 The first Conference of Lutherans in exile after World War II was held in Hanau, Germany.

1947 Paul Zeller Strodach, Lutheran musicologist, died (b. 27 March 1876).

1962 Albert H. Beck, music professor at Concordia Teachers College (River Forest, Illinois), died (b. 1 April 1894).

1962 Benjamin Britten’s (19131976) War Requiem premiered at the reconsecration of the Coventry Cathedral in England.

1968 Martin Noth (b. 3 August 1902), German Lutheran Old Testament scholar, died.

1998 A tornado hit Spencer, South Dakota, demolishing most of the town and all four Lutheran congregation.

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