1953 HT: Dan Graves ON THIS DAY, 28 August 1953, Campus Crusade for Christ was incorporated in Los Angeles. The founders of the organization were Bill and Vonette Bright. The concept behind their campus ministry was to “win the campus today and change the world tomorrow.” Today, Campus Crusade for Christ is known as just “Cru.”…
1565 HT: Dan Graves AFTER HE LEFT the Catholic Church, Pierre Viret’s first great success was to convert his home village to the views of the Protestant Reformers. Orde, Switzerland was divided between Catholics and reformers. In 1531, in the midst of this crisis, Viret returned from school in Paris and swung the town to…
1846 HT: Dan Graves IN JUNE, 1845, the Birmingham (England) Music Festival commissioned an oratorio from Felix Mendelssohn. At thirty-six-years old, Mendelssohn was a world-famous composer with most of his best-known works behind him. A child prodigy, he had written a well-received Octet at sixteen and his beloved Overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream at seventeen. (He would later write incidental music to the entire Shakespearean play.) Mendelssohn had already…
1649 HT: Christianity.com When Thomas Shepard was 44 years old, he contracted a sore throat. The outstanding Puritan preacher never recovered. On this day, August 25, 1649, his short, hard life drew to a close. Born on the day that the gunpowder plot was discovered, at the very hour in which Parliament was to have been…
