Changes

There were changes in the world on this date in history. In 303 AD the Emperor Constantine the Great was crowned by his troops upon the death of his father. Later he would be known as the ruler who took Christianity from an outlawed religion to the state religion of the Roman empire. Not all of that was beneficial to the church or the empire.

In 1965 Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, changing the face of folk and rock music. In 1994 Israel and Jordan signed the Washington Declaration, formally ending the state of war that had existed between the two countries since the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. And in 2010 the first Wikileaks publications occurred, disclosing classified information about the war in Afghanistan. Not all of that was bad, since there has been much over the years that was classified that shouldn’t have been – remember the Pentagon Papers and the secret lies and misdeeds of the Vietnam War?

Scottish-English politician Arthur Balfour was born in 1848, later became British Prime Minister, and while UK Foreign Secretary he issued the Balfour Declaration (1917) regarding the destiny of Palestine. Egyptian physician Mohamed Helmy was born in 1901. He helped many Jews escape the Holocaust and was the first Arab to receive the designation Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in recognition of his efforts. And Frank Church was born in 1924. As a Senator, he chaired a select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS, which exposed operations like MKULTRA – human experimentation on US citizens without their knowledge, and CONTELPRO involving surveillance and infiltration of civil rights organizations.

Those who passed on include the German priest and mystic Thomas a Kempis (1471), English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834), Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1843) who invented the first modern waterproof raincoat, and American golfer Ben Hogan (1997).