Birth of Christopher Columbus, who believed the earth was round and sailed across the Atlantic to reach India and China by the back way. He included christianization of the Indians among his goals.
1883 Robert Reynolds Jones, better known as Bob Jones, was born in Shipperville, Alabama. He was the son of William Alexander Jones, a Christian farmer of Calvinistic convictions. Dr. Bob, as he was called, was the eleventh of twelve children. He worked hard on the farm and his father instilled in him strong Christian convictions. As a youth he developed and unusual ability to memorize and recite scripture. Converted at eleven years of age, he was appointed Sunday school superintendent at twelve and was ordained at fifteen by the Methodist church. He was orphaned at seventeen. From the time of his conversion, he began preaching. Bob was a good speaker and a fast thinker, and he became a good debater. It was not the profoundity of his message but the straight forward manner of his presentation that touched the hearts of people. In 1926 he founded Bob Jones College (now a university) originally in Florida, but after two moves it settled in Greenville, South Carolina. The college was noted for its strict rules. The many hundreds of graduates of Bob Jones University in churches in America and on the mission fields of the world are a extension of Bob Jones' ministry.
Birth of Fyodor Dostoevsky, (under the old calendar). He authored Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamozov, The Idiot, Notes from the Underground and other novels. His writings reflect his Russian Orthodox faith, and recognize man's reliance on God's grace for salvation. (Tolstoy, his rival in greatness, and also a religious thinker, never seems to have grasped the concept of grace.) Dostoevsky, who suffered serious compulsive behaviors, nonetheless became a spiritual advisor to Russia.
