Historical Writings

English Chancellor Thomas Cromwell imposes a new series of injunctions against the clergy in Henry VIII's name.

Death of Edmund Bonner, who persecuted Protestants during the reign of Mary Tudor. Imprisoned when Elizabeth came to the throne, he had spent the last ten years of his life in the Marshalsea prison in London.

Obadiah Holmes is whipped in Boston for privately teaching Baptist views.

At Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Colonial clergyman Increase Mather, 53, received the first Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD) degree to be awarded in America.

The Continental Congress assembles for the first time in Philadelphia. After electing its president, its first official action will be a vote to open Congress with prayers. Episcopal preacher Jacob Duché is selected to deliver the invocations, which he will commence the following day (see tomorrow's It Happened This Day story).

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formally organized by the Congregational churches of New England at Farmington, Connecticut.

Three Roman Catholic universities were founded in the United States on this exact same date: St. John's in New York City, Loyola in Chicago, and Canisius in Buffalo, New York.

American baseball player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday, 26, married Helen Thompson, 20. In later years she became affectionately known as "Ma Sunday," and became his evangelistic campaign advisor. She survived Billy (d.1935) by 22 years.

Baptist Bible College was founded in Springfield, MO, under auspices of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. With an enrollment of over 2,000, it is today one of the largest Bible colleges in America.

Death in Concord, New Hampshire, of hymnwriter Jennie Evelyn Hussey, author of "Lead Me to Calvary."

Egypt's president Anwar Sadat places Coptic Pope Shenouda III under arrest in a desert monastery because he has protested the leniency shown to Muslims who had killed Christians and destroyed their churches and homes in three days of rioting.

Death of Migsti Haile in Eritrea after undergoing severe torture for refusing to sign a letter recanting her Christian faith. She is thirty-three years old when martyred.