1164 Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (ca. 1118–1170) began his six-year exile in France.

1610 Richard Bancroft (b. 1544), Archbishop of Canterbury, died.

1688 Johann Saubert (b. 1638), hymnist, died.

1696 John Conrad Weiser Jr., Lutheran lay leader prominent in American Indian affairs, was born in Afstaedt, Wuerttemberg,
Germany (d. 13 July 1760). He was the father-in-law of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg.

1752 Johann Albrecht Bengel, German Lutheran theologian and Bible scholar, died (b. 24 June 1687).

1789 In the chaos of the French Revolution the property of the church in France was taken over by the state.

1830 In Baltimore, Maryland, a general convention of the anti-Episcopal Methodist reformers met to establish the Methodist Protestant Church.

1834 Harriett Eugenia Peck Buell, American Methodist writer and hymnist, was born in Cozenovia, New York (d. 6 February 1910, Washington, D.C.).

1848 Richard Mant (b. 12 February 1776), hymnist, died.

1861 Elijah Coleman Bridgman, missionary to China, died in Shanghai (b. 22 April 1801, Belchertown, Massachusetts).

1871 Joseph Gallup Cochran, missionary to Persia, died in Persia (b. 5 February 1817, New York state).

1896 Richard Theodore Rohlfing was born in Alma, Missouri (d. 13 April 1958, River Forest, Illinois). He was a graduate of Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1921 and served as an assistant instructor at Concordia Teachers College (River Forest, Illinois) from 1921 to 1923, as a pastor in Townsend, Suring, Breed and Pine Stump, Wisconsin (1923–1925), and as a professor at River Forest beginning in 1925.

1904 Evangeline Cory Booth (1865–1950), daughter of Gen. William Booth, was appointed commander of the Salvation Army in the U.S.

1915 John T. Grape (b. 6 May 1835), American church organist and choir director, died.

1917 The British government issued the Balfour Declaration. It called for“ the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

1978 M. William Howard, an African American clergyman, was elected president of the National Council of Churches. He was the youngest person to hold that office.