February 18
676: Death of St. Colman of Lindisfarne from England, who had left for Ireland to sort out the controversy between the Roman church and the Irish as to when to date Easter and later established a monastery in Ireland.
1455: Death of Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro), an Italian monk and painter, who is said to have painted all of his works prayerfully.
1546: Death of German reformer Martin Luther.
1564: Death of sculptor Michelangelo in Rome, exhorting his friends in his death-bed only to remember the death of Christ.
1571: Assasination of a group of Spanish Jesuits in the Chesapeake Bay area, by the Indians they had come to convert, leading ultimately to the withdrawal of all Jesuits living in Florida as well.
1678: Publication of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the masterpiece in Christian literature. He was repeatedly imprisoned for preaching without a license. The period of trials between 1660-72 was a time for Bunyan to reflect and to collect the ideas, which enabled him to pen this great work.
1688: A group of Quakers and Mennonites in Germantown, PA, register a formal protest against slavery at their monthly meeting. This historic “Germantown Protest” became famous for denouncing both slavery and the slave trade.
1781: Birth of Henry Martyn, Anglican missionary to Persia, who with his great linguistic gifts translated the New Testament both into Hindustani and Arabic, before his death at 31.
1856: Sultan Abdel Medjid-Khan of the Ottoman Empire orders to make governmental approval at the highest level mandatory for a permit to build or even to repair a church. The law remained in effect for more than one century in Egypt.
1862: Five Catholics (Jean-Pierre Néel; Lucy Yi Zhenmei, a virgin; Martin Wu Xueshang; John Zhang Tianshen; and John Chen Xianheng) are executed in Guizhou Province of China, for refusing to renounce their faith.
1867: The Augusta Institute is founded in Georgia, as an institution of higher learning for black students; later it was shifted to Atlanta (in 1879), and renamed as Morehouse College (in 1913).
1874: Death of William Sandys, English lawyer and the composer of “The First Noel,” who also had contributed a lot to popularize Christmas carols.
1885: Star college athletes who had dedicated themselves to Christian mission work, known as  ‘The Cambridge Seven,’ reach China.
1948: Father Butrus Sowmy of St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Monastery in Jerusalem calls John Trever over phone and instructs him to examine an old manuscript. This turned out to be the first discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
1984: Death of D.C.K. Watson, an Anglican priest, evangelist, and charismatic, who was an active promoter of world missions.
2006: Muslims burn down Victory Baptist Church at Alamuderi in Nigeria.
Edited by:Â T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org