258 The Bishop of Rome, Pope Sixtus II, was captured while holding services in the catacombs. He was executed on his bishop’s chair.

1221 Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, died (b. 1170).

1569 Gabriel de Logres, acting for Jeanne d’Albret (1528–1572), Queen of Navarre, mother of King Henry of France, entered Bearn, having raised a formidable army of Huguenots and eluded papist armies.

1651 François Fénelon, Roman Catholic priest, was born in Perigord, France (d. 7 January 1715).

1680 Quaker rights to West Virginia (Pennsylvania) were confirmed by the Duke of York.

1695 Eberhard Ludwig Fischer, hymnist, was born at Aichelberg, Wuerttemberg. He was coeditor of the  Württemberger Gesangbuch of 1741 with Dr. Tafinger. He was prelate of Adelberg and Consistorialrath at Hohenasperg when he died in 1773. (Source: The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, p. 506)

1713 Johannes G. Olearius, German Lutheran theologian, hymnist, professor at Leipzig and a pietist, died (b. 1639).

1762 The Jesuit order was evicted from Paris.

1774 Religious leader Ann Lee (1736–1784) and her small band of followers first arrived at New York City from Liverpool, England.

1801 The Great Religious Revival of the West began at a Presbyterian camp meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky.

1806 The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved after the last emperor, Francis II (1768–1835), was forced to abdicate

1809 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet, was born in Lincolnshire, England (d. 6 October 1892).

1821 Edward H. Plumptre, hymnist, was born in London, England (d. 1 February 1891).

1840 Henry Lewis Baugher Jr., president of the General Synod, was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (d. 11 February 1899).

1842 John Ross, missionary to Manchuria, was born in Easter Rarichie, Nigg, Scotland (d. 1915).

1866 John Mason Neale, hymn translator, died at East Grinstead, England (b. 24 January 1818, London).

1895 George Frederick Root (b. 30 August 1820), American sacred chorister and composer, died.

1953 The National Lutheran Parent-Teacher League began on this date as a department of the Lutheran Education Association.

1955 Jesse Irvin Overholtzer (b. 1877), founder and first director of Child Evangelism Fellowship, died. Overholtzer founded CEF in 1937 in Chicago, although his work in youth evangelism went back as far as 1916.