553 The Second Council of Constantinople closed, having condemned the controversial Three Chapters considered to have Nestorian teachings (the teaching that Jesus Incarnate was two separate Persons, one divine, the other human, rather than one Person with two natures).

597 Augustine of Canterbury baptized Æthelberht of Kent (ca. 552–616), king of the Saxons. Ethelbert was the first Christian English king.

1536 Pope Paul III (1468–1549; pope 1534–1549) called for a general council at Mantua, Italy.

1537 Pope Paul III said that the Indians of the Americas may not be enslaved, but under pressure from the colonists he soon withdrew the bull Sublimis Dei.

1578 Synod of Dort (Dordrecht), the first national synod in the Netherlands, opened.

1587 Anders Christen Arrebo, father of Danish poetry and a hymnist, was born at Aereskoebing, Denmark (d. 12 March 1637).

1681 Ernst C. Homburg, hymnist, died at Naumberg (b. 1 March 1607).

1780 In England rioters demanded the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act, which restored to Roman Catholics some measure of civil rights. These were known as the Gordon Riots.

1851 The state of Maine passed a prohibition law, the work of a Quaker, Neal S. Dow (1804–1897).

1852 The Saint Louis Ladies’ Aid was organized, the first one in the Missouri Synod.

1859 Carl Ernst Christoph Ochs (1812–1863), missionary to India, separated from the Leipzig Mission; he later joined the Danish Lutheran Mission Society.

1865 William Christian Kohn, president of Concordia Teachers College (River Forest, Illinois) from 1913 to 1939, was born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 13 March 1943).

1875 James Augustine Healy (1830–1900) became the first African American Roman Catholic bishop in the U.S.

1887 August Conrad Stellhorn, the first secretary of schools for the LCMS, was born in Red Bud, Illinois (d. 17 May 1964).

1906 Stephan Abion Repass, educator, editor and president of General Synod South, died (b. 25 November 1838).

1907 Immanuel Lutheran College (Greensboro, North Carolina) was dedicated.

1914 Herbert A. Mueller, secretary of the LCMS from 1969 to 1983, was born in Lone Elm, Missouri (d. 15 January 1999). A 1938 Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) graduate, he served from 1940 to 1969 in York Center and Dundee, Illinois.

1979 Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) made a return trip to his home country of Poland, the first visit of a pope to a Communist country.