History Highlights

History Highlights2024-01-01T21:49:16+00:00
Beatrix Potter Creates Peter Rabbit, 1893

Week of September 2
On this day, while on holiday in Scotland with her family, aspiring naturalist Beatrix Potter penned a note to cheer the son of a friend, a little lad who had been confined…

The Death of Colonel John Laurens, 1782

Week of August 26
As the American War for Independence drew to a close, with the battle of Yorktown being a decisive victory the previous year, a young luminary of the conflict rose from his deathbed…

The Martyrdom of King Oswald, AD 642

Week of August 5
Britain in the six hundreds was a war-torn place. Gone were the days of Roman governance and provincial stability in previous centuries; here and now…

The Battle of Marston Moor, 1644

Week of July 1
Perhaps the largest battle ever fought on English soil took place two years into England’s bloody Civil War. There the King of England, Charles I...

David Livingstone Leaves for Africa, 1841

Week of May 27
In his book The Man Who Presumed, Byron Farwell records that former Confederate soldier turned journalist-explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, upon meeting David Livingstone in...

Legacy of the Venerable Bede, 735

Week of May 20
This summer, Landmark Events will be embarking on a tour of the old kingdom of Northumbria, a land once encompassing northern England and southern Scotland, with strategic...

The Sinking of RMS Lusitania, 1915

Week of May 6
The first year of the First World War was markedly contained in the neutral American mind. While Europe and her various colonies all became embroiled against each other in accordance with...

Remembering the Titanic, 1912

Week of April 8
One hundred twelve years ago, the luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. In the three short hours before she was submerged, her enduring legacy of heroism and....

Winston Churchill Creates the RAF, 1918

Week of April 1
On this day in 1918, Britain’s Royal Air Force was created by Winston Churchill. It is now considered the oldest independent flying force in the world. They were spawned from the existing...

Princess Pocahontas Dies in England, 1617

Week of March 18
Once upon a time in Jamestown, Virginia, during the days of King James I when America was yet a wilderness, an Indian Princess was traded for a...

The Death of Tiberius Caesar, 37 AD

Week of March 11
It was in the reign of Tiberius Caesar that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, and what an imposing reign it was. He was born the first son of Tiberius Nero, an acclaimed Roman General,...

The Boston Massacre, 1770

Week of March 4
When looking back at our nation’s road to independence, there were a number of inciting incidents considered to be formative in setting the tone for the manner in which such an...

The Sinking of the HMS Birkenhead, 1852

Week of February 26
There was a time not so long ago in this country where, if a woman or child found themselves in less than ideal surroundings, they might look around...

The Battle of Iwo Jima Begins, 1945

Week of February 19
Seventy-nine years ago, the battle for Iwo Jima began in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. It was fought during the last year of the war and the final push for victory extracted a brutal toll...

Admiral Gaspard de Coligny Is Born, 1519

Week of February 11
In times of persecution, many of our heroes of the faith proved they were men of perseverance, men who mounted eloquent apologetics, who defended the innocent from slaughter...

Robert Burns Is Born, 1759

Week of January 21
On this date, all over the globe, in royal grandeur and in humbler abodes, “Burns Night” is celebrated. Toasts are drunk, verses recited, odes offered to the famed haggis, and...

Samuel Pepys’ First Diary Entry, 1660

Week of December 31
With this inauspicious summary of the state of things, so began the diary of Samuel Pepys who would, in an astounding twist of providence, prove our greatest contemporary...

The Christmas Truce, 1914

Week of December 24
Entering 2024, we will soon mark the 110th anniversary of the commencement of the First World War—“the war to end all wars”. In 1914 the nations of Europe collectively...

Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941

Week of December 3
It was a quiet Sunday morning at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, home of America’s U.S. Pacific Fleet. At five minutes before 8:00, many of the 60,000 sailors and other military personnel stationed there were still...

The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, 1864

Week of November 26
On a late Indian Summer’s day, the crippled Confederacy gave its last valiant gasp when 33,000 brave southern men and boys charged the Union...

The Knights Templar Destroyed, 1307

Week of November 19
Mohammed, the founder and prophet of Islam, and his successors, spread their new religion across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of...

The Council of Trent Moved to Bologna, 1549

Week of September 17
The German Augustinian friar and theologian Martin Luther, upset over the sale of indulgences, tacked his 95 complaints against the Catholic Church on...

The Battle of Brandywine, 1777

Week of September 10
The American cause in the War for Independence had gotten a life-saving boost in the victories George Washington scored over the British army in the Christmas surprise at Trenton and the...

The “Munich Massacre” at the Olympics, 1972

Week of September 3
Islamic countries, especially the Arab nations, have never accepted the State of Israel as a legitimate member of the family of nations. Israel has fought and won eight recognized separate wars since 1948...

Whitman Mission Established, 1846

Week of August 27
Every state is allowed to install two memorial state representative images in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. In 1953 the State of Washington set up a beautiful bronze statue of a frontiersman in...

Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588

Week of August 6
Adults and children alike complain that history teachers force students to memorize dates and the events therein associated, which “just turn the pupils away from learning history.” They assume...

Britain Annexes Orange Free State, 1900

Week of May 28
During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), England’s control of the world’s land surface equaled between 20-25%, and, by 1919, British soldiers had accumulatively through history...

The Death of Henry Flagler, 1913

Week of May 14
One hundred ten years ago Henry Flagler died. Outside of Florida, few Americans recognize his name. In his own day he was often mentioned in the same breath with John D. Rockefeller, Andrew...

ANZACs Land at Gallipoli, 1915

Week of April 23
The military campaign in Gallipoli, in 1915, is little known or remembered in the United States. The U.S. did not join the 1914-1918 War until two...

Paul Revere’s Ride, 1775

Week of April 16
There are several famous horseback rides in American history, not counting at racetracks. Delegate Caesar Rodney made a midnight ride from...

The Battle of Ft. Sumter Begins, 1861

Week of April 9
April 12, 1861 the United States Navy tried to resupply Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The State of South Carolina claimed...

The Battle of Shiloh, 1862

Week of April 2
The month of April being Confederate History Month, at least in Shenandoah County, Virginia, we would do well to remember the battle that shattered the preconceptions of...

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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