William Tyndale (d. 1536) It was on this date, October 6, 1536, that William Tyndale, the priest and scholar who translated the Bible into English, was strangled and burned to death in Belgium – a victim of religious intolerance during the Reformation. He was born on an unknown date in 1484. Tyndale went to school […]

Denis Diderot (1713) On this date, October 5, 1713, the most famous French Encyclopedist, Denis Diderot, was born in Langres. Educated by the Jesuits (1728-1732), he took the opportunity to read everything that came his way, and then escaped before they could ordain him. Diderot gradually lost his faith between his Essay on Merit and […]

Gutenberg and His Bible (1452) It was on this date, September 30, 1452, that the first book printed with moveable metal type came off the press invented by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany. What we know about Gutenberg is little: he was born about 1400, died 1467 or 1468 at Mainz, and he was a […]

Friedrich Engels (1820) It was on this date, September 28, 1820, that German political philosopher and Socialist leader Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia. His father ran a factory in Manchester, in the north of England, and sent him there as a young man to gain management experience. But Engels was shocked at the […]

Pope Paul III Approves the Jesuits (1540) On this date, September 27, in 1540, Pope Paul III officially approved the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – through his encyclical, Regimini militantis ecclesiae. Born Alessandro Farnese on 29 February 1468 in Rome, Paul III was pope for 15 years, from 12 October 1534 until his […]

The Angel Moroni Appears to Joseph Smith (1827) It was on this date, September 22, 1827, that the resurrected being described as the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and eventually revealed the location of golden tablets containing the Book of Mormon beneath a hill in Palmyra, New York. Moroni is supposed to have been […]

Giles Corey Pressed to Death (1692): Churches and Torture It was on this date, September 19, 1692, during the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts colony, that sentence was carried out on Giles Corey (or Choree or Cory) that he be pressed to death for witchcraft. Corey was a prosperous farmer and 80 years old – […]

William Howard Taft (1857) It was on this date, September 15, 1857, that the 27th US President, William Howard Taft, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of a Unitarian. As he grew up, in the late 1850s, Dr. Moncure D. Conway, author of The Life of Thomas Paine, was his church minister. Taft graduated […]

Roger Williams Banished (1635): Separation of Church and State It was on this date, September 13, 1635, that Separatist preacher Roger Williams, aged about 32, was banished by the Massachusetts General Court for perpetually advocating religious tolerance and separation of church and state.[1] For denouncing the Massachusetts Bay Company charter, and for holding "divers new […]

Cardinal Richelieu (1585) It was on this date, September 9, 1585, that Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac, who achieved prominence during the reign of French King Louis XIII as Cardinal Richelieu, was born in Paris, the son of Maria de' Medici. Originally trained for a military career, his brother's resignation […]