Historical Writings

Armies of the First Crusade (1096-99) captured the city of Antioch (in modern Syria).

Thomas à Becket is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. In this capacity he will trouble his former friend King Henry II and be assassinated by four of Henry's knights on 29 December 1170.

Death at Fulham of John Aylmer, bishop of London. At one time tutor to Lady Jane Grey, he had later assisted John Foxe in translating his Actes and Monuments into Latin. As bishop of London he had been "excessively cruel" to Puritans and Catholics.

Birth of Philip William Otterbein, German Reformed pastor who in 1800 helped found the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (an early branch of the modern United Methodist Church).

Death of Dr. Edmund Calamy, a nonconformist divine, best-known for compiling lists of ministers who dissented from the Church of England and who were consequently ejected from their pulpits. He had written biographies of some.

Death of Azariah Smith, missionary to Armenia and Turkey. He had been well-known for his successful treatment of cholera, and for scientific papers he wrote on Turkey.

Central College was chartered in Pella, Iowa under Baptist auspices. (In 1916 the university passed to Dutch Reformed leadership.)

Thirty-two young men, pages of the court of King Mwanga of Buganda who had converted to Catholicism, are burned to death at Namugongo for their refusal to renounce Christianity.

Death of Hudson Taylor, English missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission.

Death of Arthur Tappan Pierson, mission authority and revial leader.

Missionary linguist Frank C. Laubach wrote in a letter: 'As we grow older all our paths diverge, and in all the world I suppose I could find nobodym who could wholly understand me excepting God.'

In Cincinnati, Ohio, Sally J. Priesand, 25, became the first woman in Reform Judaism to be ordained as a rabbi.