1260 - Under Pope Alexander IV, Chartres Cathedral in France was consecrated. Completed in less than 30 years, the structure represents high Gothic architecture at its purest.
1538 - French reformer John Calvin wrote in a letter: 'Among Christians there ought to be so great a dislike of schism, as that they may always avoid it so far as lies in their power.'
1790 - English founder of Methodism John Wesley, 87, made the last entry in his 55-year-long journal, written after preaching a sermon: 'I hope many even then resolved to choose the better part.' (Wesley died the following March.)
1911 - Missionary widow Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy Semple, 21, married Harold Stewart McPherson, also 21. Afterward, Aimee Semple McPherson went on to establish the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1918. (She and Harold would divorce in 1921).
1956 - In Syracuse, New York, Margaret Ellen Towner became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
© 1987-2008, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
