February 3

619 Laurence of Canterbury, second Archbishop of Canterbury, died.

865 (traditional date)  Ansgar, first archbishop of Hamburg and missionary to Denmark and Sweden, died (b. 8 September 801[?] near Corbie, Northern France).

1468 Johannes Gutenberg, who developed a printing press with movable type that helped the Protestant Reformation by allowing the easy dissemination of the writings of the reformers), died (b. ca. 1400).

1518 Pope Leo X (1475–1521) ordered Gabrielle Della Volta to discipline Martin Luther and imposed silence on the Augustinian monks in the Roman Catholic Church.

1642 Johan Campanius (1601–1683), Lutheran colonial pastor in America, was commissioned to serve the Swedish Lutherans on the Delaware River.

1690 Richard Rawlinson, an English clergyman and antiquarian collector of books and manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was born (d. 6 April 1755).

1786 Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, German biblical scholar, was born at Nordhausen, Hanover (d. 23 October 1842).

1809 Felix Mendelssohn, German Lutheran composer, was born in Hamburg (d. 4 November 1847).

1832 William H. Doane, Baptist hymn writer, was born in Preston, Connecticut (d. 23 December 1915).

1834 The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina established the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute, today known as Wake Forest University.

1842 Sidney Lanier, Confederate poet, was born in Macon, Georgia (d. 7 September 1881).

1863 The Christian Union was organized at Columbus, Ohio (perhaps in 1864), under the leadership of J. F. Given. It was a loose-knit denomination with each local congregation being completely self-governing. Independent congregations of Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational and United Brethren churches were involved in the organization. Although it avoided creeds, this association of churches was basically evangelical in theology and congregational in church polity. The member churches were found mostly in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. It was composed of Protestant congregations opposed to "political preaching" during the Civil War.

1871 Carl A. Weiss was born in Chemnitz, Germany (d. 8 March 1950, Quincy, Illinois). He came to America in 1873 with his parents. He graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1894 and served congregations in North Carolina and Illinois. He also taught at Concordia College (Conover, North Carolina).

1886 George Victor Schick, instructor at Johns Hopkins (1913–1914) and professor at Concordia College (Fort Wayne, Indiana) and Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis), was born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 31 December 1964, Saint Louis).

1888 Blanche Kerr Brock, who with her husband, Virgil, formed one of the best-loved Gospel hymn writing and singing teams in America in the early part of the twentieth century, was born (d. 3 January 1958).

1896 Jane Francesca Wilde, hymnist, died at Chelsea (b. 1826).

1925 John Henry Christian Käppel, director (president) of Saint Paul’s College (Concordia, Missouri) from 1888 to 1925, died at Kansas City, Missouri (b. 15 September 1853, Cleveland, Ohio).

1943 The Allied troopship Dorchester was torpedoed and sunk. Four chaplains selflessly helped men to safety and ministered to the dying as the ship sank.

1951 The first convention of Lutheran women’s societies in India met in Nagercoil.