20th May: Today in Christian History

 

20th May, 1277

On this day in Christian History, the Scholarly Pope John XXI was crushed to death at Viterbo, Italy, when his study ceiling collapses on him.

20th May, 1506

On this day in Christian History, Christopher Columbus died at Valladolid, Spain. The explorer had opened the Americas to colonization and considered it his mission to bring Christianity to the New World.

20th May, 1521

On this day in Christian History, a cannonball struck a Spanish soldier, Iñez "Ignatio" Loyola, breaking his right leg. While recovering, he read about the lives of saints and determined to imitate them. He wrote a famous guide to  Christian meditation, the Spiritual Exercises, and founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

20th May, 1527

On this day in Christian History, Austrian authorities tortured and killed the Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler, as an arch heretic.

20th May, 1535

On this day in Christian History, Pope Paul III made a cardinal of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Fisher had long opposed King Henry VIII and even invited Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to invade England. Henry declared that he would send Fisher’s head to Rome to get his cardinal’s hat - and soon will have him beheaded.

20th May, 1560

On this day in Christian History, a scholar John Feckenham, was taken to the Tower of London in England for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. He later spent twenty-four years there.

20th May, 1690

On this day in Christian History, John Eliot, a missionary to the American Indians, died in the parsonage at Roxbury. He had translated the entire Bible into the Algonquin Indian language and published the first Bible printed in America.

20th May, 1732

On this day in Christian History, Thomas Boston died at Ettrick, Scotland. In his lifetime, he was an influential Scottish minister and author of The Crook in the Lot.

20th May, 1930

On this day in Christian History, an Orthodox church worker Michael Alexeyevich Golikov, who was already in prison camp under a sentence of three years, was sentenced to ten years for trying to communicate to the West the terrible conditions of the camps. He later died, still imprisoned, in 1938.

20th May, 1930

On this day in Christian History, just three days after sentencing him to death, Soviets shot Mark Arsenyevich Dannik, warden of the Orthodox church in Ustyanka, Loktevsky Region. He was executed for anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation - that is, for speaking against the wickedness of the Soviet regime.

20th May, 1937

On this day in Christian History, Jesse Overholtzer founded the Child Evangelism Fellowship in Chicago.

20th May, 1943

On this day in Christian History, Smith College awarded Wu Yi-fang, first Chinese woman to head a Chinese college (Ginling Women’s College), an honorary Doctor of Law degree.

20th May, 1945

On this day in Christian History, The Christian Airmen’s Missionary Fellowship was officially born. Later it changed its name to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF). Betty Greene, an American wartime pilot, had written an article in which she suggested using planes to help missionaries. Jim Truxton, a Navy pilot, saw it, contacted Betty and suggested organizing to implement her idea.