Historical Writings

Death of Johann Brenz, a Lutheran reformer in Swabia, who had helped prepare ordinances that determined Lutheran doctrine and procedure.

Oliver Cromwell's troops breach the walls of Drogheda, a fortified city in Ireland. The event is notable because Catholic priests and friars, some of whom had encouraged resistance during the seige, are treated as combatants and killed on sight along with many civilians.

Colonial American clergyman Solomon Stoddard, 29, was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Mass. He remained at this pulpit for the next 57 years! (From 1727 until his death in 1729, Stoddard was assisted by his grandson, Jonathan Edwards.)

Missionary John Williams and his wife go to the island of Raiatea, where they commence their mission work among the scattered Pacific islands.

The Chronicle, an Australian newspaper, prints the story of Mary Teague, an Irish immigrant who had been charged with drunkeness and made to sit in the stocks an hour because she was staggering from hunger. She collapsed in a ditch afterward. The story will force the reluctant colonial governor to provide Catholic philanthropist Carolyn Chisholm with space to house immigrant girls.

Mormon fanatic John D. Lee, angered over President Buchanan's order to remove Brigham Young from governorship of the Utah Territory, incited a band of Mormons and Indians to massacre a California-bound wagon train of 135 (mostly Methodists) in Mountain Meadows, Utah.

The Scarritt Bible and Training School in Nashville, TN, was dedicated, primarily as the result of the conception, urging and fund-raising of southern Methodist missions leader and social reformer, Belle Harris Bennett (1852-1922).

The World Parliament of Religions opens in Chicago, opposed by many evangelicals on the ground that it treats Christianity as one religion among equals.

Eighteen year old Wang Ming-Dao leaves home to begin work at a Presbyterian school. He will become a notable independent church leader in China and, because of that, will go to prison for most of his life.

Death of Melvin Ernest Trotter. At one time a hopeless drunk, who could not keep a promise or hold a job, he was walking toward Lake Michigan to drown himself when he heard the gospel preached at the Pacific Garden Mission and found Christ sufficient to keep him from ever drinking again. He had gone on to found sixty-seven rescue missions to help others as addicted as himself.

The first Southern Baptist church to be established in Nebraska was organized at Lincoln, with 34 charter members. Founded by Southern Baptist U.S. Air Force personnel who had been stationed in Lincoln, the congregation first met for worship on Easter Sunday of this year.

American Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in a letter: 'We have not tasted the things given to us in Christ. Instead, we have built around ourselves walls and cells, and buried ourselves in dust and documents, and now we wonder why we cannot see God, or leap to do his will.'

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is destroyed in the Muslim attack that brings down the twin towers in New York City.