1766 - In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Queen's College was chartered under the Dutch Reformed Church, to provide education "...especially in divinity, preparing [youth] for the ministry and other good offices." The present name of the school, Rutgers University, was adopted in 1924.
1770 - French philosopher Fran-'-ois Voltaire, 75, uttered his famous remark: 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.'
1871 - Following seven months of searching, foreign correspondent to the "New York Herald" Henry M. Stanley succeeded at last in locating Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Ujiji, Central Africa. Stanley prefaced his encounter with these words: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume.'
1952 - English apologist C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter: 'I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes.'
1977 - It was announced that Pope Paul VI had ended the automatic excommunication imposed on divorced American Catholics who remarried. (The excommunication was first imposed by the Plenary Council of American Bishops in 1884.)
© 1987-2008, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
