German Protestants arrive in colony of Georgia to create a new town, Ebenezer - March 12

Pope John Paul II asks God’s forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages, including wrongs inflicted on Jews, women and minorities.

417 - Death of Pope Innocent I, who acted in international affairs, such as excommunicating Pelagius, defending Jerome, and negotiating with barbarians.

1672 - Death of evangelical hymnwriter Ludaemilia Elisabeth Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Countess of Schwarzburg, from measles. The best known of her two hundred hymns was “Jesus, Jesus, Only Jesus.”

1734 - Just a year after the colony of Georgia had been founded by James Oglethorpe, a group of German Protestants arrived to create a new town, Ebenezer, as a refuge for Lutherans expelled from Catholic-controlled Salzburg (in the Alps Mountains in present-day Austria). Its leaders included Rev. Johann Martin Bolzius and Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck. Because the first town was poorly sited⎯too far from the coast and river transportation⎯a second town, New Ebenezer, was built two years later on the Savannah River. The town flourished until it was destroyed by the British during the Revolutionary War.

1908 - J. Wilbur Chapman and Charles Alexander attempt city-wide evangelization of Philadelphia, dividing the city into 42 districts, and sending an evangelist-musician team to each. The result is about 8,000 conversions.

2000 - Pope John Paul II asks God’s forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages, including wrongs inflicted on Jews, women, and minorities.

– Source: Christian History Institute