1527 - Swiss Anabaptist reformer Felix Manz, 29, was drowned in punishment for preaching adult (re-)baptism. Manz's death made him the first Protestant in history to be martyred at the hands of other Protestants.

1839 - Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: 'There is nothing like a calm look into the eternal world to teach us the emptiness of human praise.'

1949 - U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed: 'Our Father in heaven, give us the long view of our work and our world. Help us to see that it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.'

1922 - Following her sensational divorce, popular American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, 32, resigned her denominational ordination and returned her fellowship papers to the General Council of the Assemblies of God.

1964 - Following an unprecedented pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope Paul VI met with Greek Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in Jerusalem. It was the first such meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches in over 500 years (since 1439).

© 1987-2010, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from

Almanac of the Christian Church