828 The relics of Gospel-writer Mark, brought from Alexandria, Egypt, for safekeeping, are landed in Venice where they are received with pomp by the Doge, Giustiniano Particiaco. Venice will adopt Mark as their patron saint.
1865 Congress passes the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America (passes 121-24)
1865 General Robert E. Lee named Commander-in-Chief of Confederate Armies during US Civil War
1939 Josiah Mtekateka is ordained as a deacon. He will overcome racism to become the first black African bishop of the Anglican Church in Malawi.
1943 Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to Soviet troops at Stalingrad
1950 US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb
1985 South African President P. W. Botha offers to free Nelson Mandela if he denounces violence
1990 Ninety-year-old Catholic priest Philip Wang Ziyang dies after forty years in Chinese labor camps. He had been offered release in 1978, but refused because the terms of release violated his conscience.
Historical Events Today
Today In Film & Tv
1949 1st daytime soap on TV “These Are My Children” (NBC in Chicago)
Today In Music
1679 Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera “Bellerophon” premieres at the Palais-Royal in Paris
Today In Sport
2015 17-year-old Lydia Ko of New Zealand becomes the youngest golfer in men’s or women’s golf history to be ranked No. 1 in the world
Do You Know This Fact About Today?
2019 Colonization of the Americas in the late 1500s killed so many people it cooled the planet and led to a “Little Ice Age”, according to a scientific report published in “Quaternary Science Reviews”
Would You Believe This Fact About Today?
1747 The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital, London
