529 The second Synod of Orange convened in Arausio in southern France.

1448 Jean de Lastic, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes, wrote Charles VII (1403–1461), king of France, from Ethiopia, telling about Zara Yaiqob’s victories over the Saracens. His letter refers to Prester John, a legendary Christian king who had originally been thought to rule in Asia but later was assumed to rule in Africa.

1519 The first session of the Leipzig Debate between Johann Eck (1486–1543) and Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) ended.

1530 Martin Luther wrote that the Augsburg Confession pleased him extremely.

1721 Hans Egede (1686–1758), Lutheran Apostle of Greenland, landed in Greenland with a party of forty-six people.

1840 Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was examined for his theological degree at the University of Copenhagen.

1878 First African American Lutheran congregation was organized in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the work of the Synodical Conference by Frederick Berg (1856–1939), a graduate of Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis). The first missionary was John Frederick Doescher, who had visited Memphis, Tennessee, and established a Sunday school in Little Rock, as well as one in the “Sailors’ Home” in New Orleans.

1880 Prussia declared that clergy are subordinate to the state.

1904 Theodor Herzl (b. 2 May 1860), Hungarian-born journalist and founder of political Zionism, died.

1907 Pope Pius X (1835–1914) in the encyclical Lamentabili Sane formally condemned the modernist intellectual movement within the Roman Catholic Church.

1936 Charles Theodore Benze, Lutheran seminary professor, died (b. 19 September 1865).

1960 Alfred Henry Ackley (b. 21 January 1887), American Presbyterian clergyman and hymn writer, died.

1973 The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Jerry Falwell’s (1933–2007) church, claiming financial irregularities.

1976 Erling G. Hestenes, the first American Lutheran physician to serve as medical missionary in South Africa (1948–1976), died at Dundee, South Africa. Hestenes took a call to South Africa in 1948 and spent his entire ministry among the Zulu people in Natal Province.