History Highlights

History Highlights2023-02-28T00:37:48+00:00
The Birth of Georg Philipp Telemann, 1681

Week of March 12
The Protestant Reformation produced two different approaches to worship among those who left the Roman Church. The “Calvinistic” Reformation sought a return...

The “Spanish Flu” Outbreak Declared, 1918

Week of March 5
When discussing the providence of God in history, one must take into account natural phenomena as well as the lives of people. Great men and intellectual or ideological...

The Birth of Alexander Graham Bell, 1847

Week of February 26
At the beginning of the 21st Century, American historian Arthur Herman published a book entitled How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western...

James Renwick, Last Covenanter Martyr, 1668

Week of February 12
Upon the “Restoration” of King Charles II to the English monarchy in 1660, after the Commonwealth period of Oliver Cromwell, the persecution of...

The Birth of Charles Dickens, February 7, 1812

Week of February 5
For more than a century, the literary world proclaimed Charles Dickens the greatest novelist in the English language. With the deconstruction of literary standards and the moral turpitude that...

Execution of Charles I, 1649

Week of January 29
Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Tudor line of the English monarchy came to an end, and the Stuart family of Scotland inherited the English throne; James VI, Elizabeth’s first cousin...

Missionary John Hunt Arrives in Fiji, 1838

Week of December 18
The year 1838 was auspicious in the life of John Hunt. In February he met two missionaries to the Islands of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean and heard of the rampant cannibalism there...

Gene Moran Falls from the Sky, 1943

Week of November 27
In war there are a million ways to die. Occasionally someone, by the providence of God, survives what killed almost 100% of men caught in the same situation. A Wisconsin farm boy, eager to enlist...

Death of Leo Tolstoy, 1910

Week of November 20
Several Russian novelists produced works that appear on almost every list of “the greatest novels ever written;” Count Lev Nickolayevich Tolstoy usually sits atop that list. On November 20, 1910...

The Edict of Nantes Proclaimed, 1598

Week of April 10
Several of the greatest preachers, evangelists and theologians of the Protestant Reformation were born in France, often writing in French as well as Latin. They pastored churches in France…

The Battle of New Orleans, 1815

Week of January 2
If ever there was an international city in America, New Orleans was it. The city was founded by the French Mississippi Company in 1718, ceded to Spain as a result of the French and Indian War...

Remembering the Titanic

One hundred nine years ago tonight, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and, in less than three short hours before she sank, her enduring legacy of heroism and hubris was cemented in history.

The Deliverance of John Newton, 1748

Week of March 7
In the year 1748, twenty-three-year-old English seaman John Newton recorded that “on March 10th, the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.” Preacher John Wesley was...

The Death of Isaac Watts, 1748

Week of November 22
The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century changed the music used in the worship of God. No longer the sole provenance of choirs or professional singers, the congregation began singing in...

The Synod of Dort Begins, 1618

Week of November 8
Once the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century had swept across Europe, various countries were able to stabilize their borders and establish their new-found faith, although political...

The Men of Scotland’s Past: John Knox

Graduates accepting their diplomas at the University of St. Andrews are whacked with the “pant-leg of John Knox.” I once asked a student the day after his graduation if he knew who John Knox was.

Birth of Theodore Roosevelt, 1858

Week of October 23
The birth of Theodore Roosevelt on October 27, 1858 presaged by one week the first ever capture of a branch of the federal government by the...

Ratification of the Bill of Rights, 1791

Week of December 13
The creation of the American Republic under the Constitution of the United States, in 1787, came into being through extremely contentious debates and competing visions of the place of a central...

The Martyrdom of Hugh M’Kail, 1666

Week of December 20
The roll of Christian martyrs extends back in time to the days following the resurrection of Our Lord. It continues daily in many far-flung nations of the earth. Jesus Himself told the Apostles to expect...

The Death of J. Gresham Machen, 1937

Week of December 27
The First World War shattered, for many intellectuals, what remained of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that had undergirded Western Civilization for centuries...

The Death of Sitting Bull, 1890

Week of December 12
In 1868 at Fort Laramie, in Goshen County, Wyoming, the United States Government signed a treaty with the Sioux Nation, wherein the Sioux agreed to accept all the...

The Birth of Rudyard Kipling, 1865

Week of December 26
Rudyard Kipling published eleven novels and hundreds of poems, short stories, and newspaper articles between 1881 until his death...

Sickness Plagues the Niger Expedition, 1841

Week of September 4
West Africa has long been known as “the white man’s graveyard,” and for obvious and deadly reasons—fatal tropical diseases have plagued Europeans along those coasts for five hundred...

Duke of Marlborough Wins at Malplaquet, 1709

Week of September 11
Sir Winston Churchill, MP (1620-1688) fathered eleven legitimate children, fought for Charles I in the English Civil War, paid a huge fine for serving on...

The Great Jamaica Revival, 1860

Week of September 25
“I would affirm that much of the modern approach to evangelism, with its techniques and methods, is unnecessary if we really believe...

Chief Joseph Surrenders, 1877

Week of October 2
Following the American War Between the States, the United States government reorganized the army after demobilizing a million men. In 1866...

Victory at Yorktown, 1781

Week of October 16
Few battles in history had larger repercussions than the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, concluded on October 19, 1781. An army, representing thirteen...

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