Gregory the Great (Gregory I) Becomes Pope (590) How Great Was He? It was on this date, September 3, 590, that the son of a wealthy patrician named Gordianus, whose name history does not recall, was made Pope in the Roman Catholic Church. He took the name Gregory and is remembered as Pope St. Gregory […]

King of Siam's Eclipse (1868): Churches and Eclipses It was on this date, August 18, 1868, that a total solar eclipse, called the King of Siam's Eclipse, Saros Series 133, was seen in what is now Thailand. This was during the reign of the very same King Mongkut who figures in the book by Anna […]

Freethinkers such as Voltaire in France and John Locke in England pushed back the night of superstition with the light of reason.

Buddha (560 BCE) It was on this date, April 8, 560 BCE, according to tradition, that Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born in what is now modern Nepal. He grew up in a royal family, so he was sometimes called Prince Siddhartha, and at the age of twenty-nine, he left the kingdom, his […]

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally ... an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

From 1522 he cohabited with Anna Reinhard, producing four children, with no discernable diminution of Zwingli's ecclesiastical effectiveness.

Andreas Vesalius died at age 49 in Zakinthos, Greece. He had reached Jerusalem, but never made it back home. You could say Vesalius died for the church that persecuted him.