Donald Sutherland (1934) It was on this date, July 17, 1934, that actor Donald Sutherland was born Donald McNichol Sutherland in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The unusual-looking, lanky actor reached a height of 6'4" (1.93 m) by adulthood, and his distinctive voice seems to have been bequeathed to his son, actor Kiefer Sutherland. After […]

Muhammad's Hegira (622) It was on this date, July 16, 622, by tradition and on the Western calendar, that Muhammad's hegira (or hijra, هِجْرَة) occurred — that is, his flight from Mecca to Medina (then called Yathrib) in order to escape persecution and found a community of believers. History shows the event taking place in […]

Mary Baker Eddy (1821) and "Christian Science" It was on this date, July 16, 1821, that Mary Baker Eddy was born near Concord, New Hampshire into a Congregationalist family. A sickly youth, Eddy studied alternative medicine, alongside the Bible, in search of a mind-body-Bible connection. Prompted by her supposed recovery from a life-threatening accident in […]

The First Crusade Captures Jerusalem (1099) Then Kills Everyone It was on this date, July 15, 1099, that the First Crusade, or "Campaign of the Cross," achieved its objective and captured Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher. Once the Muslim citizens of Jerusalem lost control of their city, the Crusaders then proceeded, with the zeal of […]

James McNeill Whistler (1833) It was on this date, July 11, 1834, that American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His father was an Army Major and Whistler himself was educated at West Point, from which he was dismissed. Whistler was a leading proponent of the credo, “art for art’s sake” […]

John Chancellor (1927) It was on this date, July 14, 1927, that American news reporter, anchor, and NBC commentator John Chancellor was born in Chicago, Illinois. A high school drop-out, Chancellor got his first job as a copy boy at the Chicago Sun-Times. From there his assignments extended from the 1957 desegregation of Central High […]

The Third Secret of Fátima Revealed (1917) It was on this date, July 13, 1917, that the Third Secret of Fátima was revealed by the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in a rural village north of Lisbon. At least, that is how Lucia dos Santos remembered it. But by this time she had been […]

William Osler (1849) It was on this date, July 12, 1849, the Anglo-American physician William Osler was born in Bond Head, Canada West (now Ontario). He took his MD in 1872 and taught medicine from 1874-1884. In 1889 he became the first professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and was one of the four […]

Günther Anders (1902) It was on this date, July 12, 1902, that Austrian philosopher Günther Anders, originally Günther Siegmund Stern, was born in Breslau, the offspring of Clara and William Stern, founders of child psychology. An assimilated Jewish intellectual, he found that there were too many writers using the name Stern, so his editor suggested […]

Henry David Thoreau (1817) It was on this date, July 12, 1817, the writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated Harvard in 1837 and discovered a talent for writing about nature. Thoreau embraced the Transcendentalist belief in personal insight and experience, but he was neither a critical nor a […]