Historical Writings

Death of Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who had been a vocal supporter of Celtic church practices against Roman practices until the Synod of Whitby opted to adhere to Roman practices.

Kneeling in the confessional, Catherine of Genoa experiences an overpowering sense of her faults and of the world's misery, owing to its sin against the goodness of God, and she nearly swoons. Transported by love for God, she lives the remainder of her life (d.1510) in an unusually heightened spiritual state.

Polish forces attack the Blue Jay Lake monastery near Novgorod and kill Euphrosynus, its founder, because he does not have valuables to turn over to them as ransom for his life.

[Old Style] Oliver Cromwell's government creates a court of forty-three commissioners to examine all ministers who are awarded church positions in England to certify their fitness for ministerial service.

Death at St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews, Scotland, of famed Presbyterian preacher and author Samuel Rutherford (March 29 and 30 are also sometimes given).

English founder of Methodism John Wesley wrote in a letter: 'I look upon all the world as my parish.'

American missionary David Brainerd, 28, ended two-andÂone-half years of labor among the colonial Indians of New England, after having been continually plagued with ill health. (Brainerd died of tuberculosis seven months later.)

Evangelist William Romaine preaches at St. Mary's, Oxford, on "the Lord our righteousness" and gives such offense to the self-righteous scholars that he is barred from ever preaching there again.

Believing himself eternally damned, William Cowper writes his last poem "The Castaway," in which he compares himself to a man who has fallen off a ship in a storm and has to be abandoned by his shipmates. Cowper is well-known in English literature as a precursor of the Romantic movement and also wrote such hymns as "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood," and "O for a Closer Walk with God."

Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: 'The more God opens your eyes, the more you will feel that you are lost in yourself.'

American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, 41, published her classic antislavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The controversy it kindled helped lead to the American Civil War, nine years later.

In a letter to an assembly of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, W. H. Miles, their only living bishop, urges them to elect three more because the denomination has grown so large one or two bishops can no longer oversee it.

Birth of Fred Rogers, American Presbyterian clergyman and -- since its premiere in 1965 -- host of public television's longest running children's program: "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."