786 Martyrdom of St. Abo in Tsibili, Georgia. A Muslim perfumer from Baghdad, he had become a Christian and attempted to strengthen Christians and win Muslims to Christ.
1494 Columbus and his men celebrate the first mass in the Americas, on Isabelle Island, Haiti.
1649 The English Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial for treason and other “high crimes”.
1771 First baptism takes place among the Moravian converts of the Saramaccas people, near where the Senthea River empties into the Surinam River. Chief Arabina, the mission’s first convert is baptized.
1835 The Swedish Mission Society is founded.
1850 Conversion of Charles Spurgeon who will become one of the most notable pastors of all time. He had entered a little Methodist church because of cold and snow where a deacon told him to look to Christ. “I can never tell you how it was but I no sooner saw whom I was to believe than I also understood what it was to believe and I did believe in one moment.”
1902 Edith Warner, a Presbyterian missionary, sets out from Asaba, Nigeria, to become the first white woman to visit the East Niger.
1912 Geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener presents his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture at the Geological Association (Geologischen Vereinigung) at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt.
1941 US President Franklin Roosevelt makes his “Four Freedoms” speech (freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear) during his US State of Union address.
1948 Janani Luwum converts to Christianity in Uganda. He immediately asks his family to pray that he won’t backslide, but rather lead a godly life. Eventually he will become an archbishop and will be executed by the brutal dictator Idi Amin.
1987 Astronomers at University of California see 1st sight of birth of a galaxy.
1992 Naimat Ahmer, a Christian educator and poet in Pakistan, is stabbed seventeen times in earshot of students by a Muslim who claims Ahmer has insulted Mohammad. Ahmer taught that Christ is the only way to salvation.
2021 Supporters of President Donald Trump storm US Capitol in Washington during congressional certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s win, resulting in five deaths and prompting evacuation of lawmakers and vice-president Mike Pence.
HISTORICAL EVENTS TODAY
TODAY IN FILM & TV
1975 “Wheel Of Fortune” debuts on NBC-TV.
TODAY IN SPORT
1681 First recorded boxing match is engineered by Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle; his butler vs his butcher.
DO YOU KNOW THIS FACT ABOUT TODAY? DID YOU KNOW?
1942 Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to schedule a flight around the world (“Pacific Clipper”).
WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS FACT ABOUT TODAY? WOULD YOU BELIEVE?
1979 The Village People’s Y.M.C.A becomes their only UK #1 single. At its peak it sold over 150,000 copies a day.
