BIBLE VERSE

On This Day in:

896 – Formosus ended his reign as pope.

1541 – Ignatius of Loyola became the first superior-general of the Jesuits.

1581 – Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I. A few months earlier he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world.

1687 – King James II ordered that his declaration of indulgence be read in church.

1812 – The territory of Orleans became the 18th U.S. state and will become known as Louisiana.

1818 – A plan was passsed by the U.S. Congress that the U.S. flag would have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars and that a new star would be added for the each new state.

1841 – U.S. President William Henry Harrison, at the age of 68, became the first president to die in office. He had been sworn in only a month before he died of pneumonia.

1848 – Thomas Douglas became the first San Francisco public teacher.

1850 – The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.

1862 – In the U.S., the Battle of Yorktown began as Union General George B. McClellan closed in on Richmond, VA.

1887 – Susanna M. Salter became mayor of Argonia, KS, making her the first woman mayor in the U.S.

1902 – British Financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will that would provide scholarships for Americans to Oxford University in England.

1905 – In Kangra, India, an earthquake killed 370,000 people.

1914 – The first known serialized moving picture opened in New York City, NY. It was “The Perils of Pauline”.

1917 – The U.S. Senate voted 90-6 to enter World War I on the Allied side.

1918 – The Battle of Somme, an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.

1932 – After five years of research, professor C.G. King, of the University of Pittsburgh, isolated vitamin C.

1945 – Hungary was liberated from Nazi occupation.

1945 – During World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.

1949 – Twelve nations signed a treaty to create The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1953 – Fifteen doctors were released by Soviet leaders. The doctors had been arrested before Stalin had died and were accused of plotting against him.

1967 – The U.S. lost its 500th plane over Vietnam.

1967 – Johnny Carson quit “The Tonight Show.” He returned three weeks later after getting a raise of $30,000 a week.

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the age of 39.

1969 – Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.

1971 – Veterans stadium in Philadelphia, PA, was dedicated.

1973 – In New York, the original World Trade Center twin towers opened. At the time they were the tallest building in the world.

1974 – Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth’s major league baseball homerun record with 714.

1975 – More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed just after takeoff from Saigon.

1979 – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan, was executed. He had been convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.

1981 – Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city, which was San Antonio, TX.

1983 – At Cape Canaveral, the space shuttle Challenger took off on its first flight. It was the 6th flight for the shuttle program.

1984 – U.S. President Reagan proposed an international ban on chemical weapons.

1985 – In Sudan, a coup ousted President Nimeiry and replaced him with General Dahab.

“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…”

— 1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)