March 11

843 Icons were officially sanctioned and reintroduced in Eastern churches after a controversy that occasionally turned violent.

1513 Leo X (1475–1521) was elected pope. His eight-year tenure, marked by gross excesses and immorality, would largely be remembered for his 1520 excommunication of Martin Luther.

1547 The Council of Trent (1545–1563) reconvened in Bologna, Italy, to avoid the plague.

1575 Matthias Flacius (Illyricus), Gnesio-Lutheran church historian, died (b. 3 March 1520).

1722 Wolfgang Christoph Dessler, hymnist, died in Nürnberg (b. 11 February 1660).

1812 Fire engulfed missionary William Carey's (1761–1834) print shop in Serampore, India, destroying his massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, sets of type for fourteen eastern languages and whole versions of the Bible.

1845 Wittenberg College (now University) was chartered in Springfield, Ohio, under Lutheran auspices.

1860 H. Frances Davidson, pioneer American missionary, was born. As the first woman in the Brethren in Christ Church to have earned an M.A. degree (1892), she began a teaching career at McPherson College in Kansas. In 1897 she became one of her denomination's first missionaries to the African continent, helping to found the Matopo Mission in modern Zimbabwe. Remaining in Africa until 1923, she returned to the U.S. and taught at Messiah College (Grantham, Pennsylvania) until 1932. She died in 1935.

1863 Daniel Dulany Addison, American Episcopal clergyman and writer, was born at Wheeling, West Virginia (d. 1936).

1868 Asa Thurston, missionary to the Sandwich Islands, died (b. 12 October 1787, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

1884 Louis John Sieck, president of Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis), was born in Erie, Pennsylvania (d. 14 October 1952).

1897 Henry Drummond (b. 17 August 1851), Scottish biologist and religious writer, died.

1913 Hermann Duemling, educator and writer, died (b. 5 October 1845, Schönebeck, Germany).

1923 Mary Ann Thomson (b. 5 December 1834), English-born American hymn writer, died.

1965 Boston minister James J. Reeb died after being beaten during a civil rights demonstration in Selma, Alabama.

1978 Herman A. Harms died. He was born in 1888 in Zahrenholz, Hanover, Germany. From 1902 to 1908 he attended the college and seminary of the Hermannsburger Freikirche in Uelzen. He then came to America and graduated from Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis) in 1909. He served as the vice-president (1924–1927) and president (1927–1935) of the Iowa District and as president of the Iowa District East (1936–1938). He then was elected fourth vice-president of the LCMS (1938–1941), first vice-president (1941–1956) and second vice-president (1956–1959). He was the first full-time vice-president of the synod.