1724: The first American congregation of Dunkards (German Baptists) gathered in Philadelphia, PA.

     1785: The Sunday School Society was formed in London, under the leadership of Robert Raikes. It provided weekly Christian tutoring for the poor. Eventually 3,730 schools were formed, and their success ultimately inspired the founding in 1824 of the American Sunday School Union.

     1807: Protestant Christianity first came to China when English missionary Robert Morrison, 25, arrived on this date. (Catholic missions had first penetrated China in the 16th century with the arrival of Jesuit Matteo Ricci in 1582.)

     1845: St. Louis, Missouri, became the site of the first Hebrew synagogue to be built in the Mississippi Valley.

     1958: The first cathedral of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada was dedicated in Hackensack, NJ. The American archdiocese for this branch of Orthodoxy was created the previous year by Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III.