Historical Writings

Although incomplete, Westminster Abbey is consecrated. King Edward the Confessor is erecting it as his burial church. He dies a week after its consecration.

Educator, Bible translator, and church reformer John Wycliffe suffers a paralyzing stroke while saying mass. He will die three days later.

Death in Lyon, France, of Francis of Sales, Bishop of Geneva and author of the popular books Introduction to the Devout Life and Treatise on the Love of God.

Aaron, a Tamil catechist, becomes the first Indian pastor ordained by the Lutheran mission at Tranquebar, India.

English revivalist George Whitefield wrote in a letter: 'Redeem your precious time: pick up the fragments of it, that not one moment of it may be lost. Be much in secret prayer. Converse less with man, and more with God.'

Baptism of Krishna Pal, following his conversion from Hinduism to Christianity under the teaching of William Carey and his co-workers. He will preach the gospel to fellow Indians.

In Missouri, St. Louis Academy (founded in 1818) was chartered as St. Louis University. It was the first Catholic university established in the U.S. west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Greensborough Female College was chartered in North Carolina, under the Methodist Church. In 1920 its name was changed to Greensboro College.

Birth of Samuel A. Ward, American music publisher. Ward composed the tune MATERNA, to which we sing today the patriotic hymn, "America, The Beautiful."

At a seven-day convention in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the General Assembly of Apostolic Assemblies (GAAA) was formed. Its institutional life was short, however. Due to the pressures of World War I, the GAAA was formed too late to recognize ministers of military age.

Jacob DeShazzar, one of America's Doolittle Raiders, returns to Japan to evangelize the country he bombed during the recently ended Second World War.