Moments Almanac Episodes

September 4 — Two Men, Two Surrenders On September 4, 1886, Apache leader Geronimo laid down his weapons for the final time, ending years of resistance against the United States government. Seventy-nine years later, on the same date, physician, theologian, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer died at the hospital he had built in Lambaréné, Gabon. Geronimo surrendered because the fight had reached its end. Schweitzer surrendered a life of prestige and accomplishment because he believ...

On September 3, two men tried to disappear — for very different reasons. In 590, Gregory the Great tried to escape the responsibility of becoming bishop of Rome. More than twelve centuries later, Frederick Douglass escaped slavery, risking everything for freedom. One ran from a calling he didn’t want. The other ran toward a freedom he’d never been allowed. Their stories raise a powerful question: What are you running from — and what are you running toward? In this episode of Moments Almanac, ...

Two people, separated by more than two centuries, faced stretches of water that had already demanded much from them. Methodist pioneer Thomas Coke crossed the Atlantic again and again for the sake of the gospel. Diana Nyad returned to the waters between Cuba and Florida after four failed attempts. Their stories remind us that faithfulness doesn’t always mean getting there the first time. Sometimes it means getting back in the water. A Moments Almanac reflection on perseverance, calling, and Gal...

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Eighteen years later, on September 1, 1957, Billy Graham stood before an enormous crowd in Times Square to close his historic New York Crusade. One demanded surrender at the point of a gun. The other invited surrender at the foot of a cross. Two moments, one date — and two radically different pictures of power, conquest, grace, and the kingdom of God. Keywords: Billy Graham, September 1, World War II, invasion of ...

On August 31, 1688, John Bunyan died after one final journey of service. The beloved preacher and author of The Pilgrim’s Progress had traveled through heavy rain to help reconcile an estranged father and son. He returned soaked, developed a fever, and never recovered. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we follow Bunyan from a poor tradesman’s home to a prison cell, from an unexpected conversation with a few faithful women to the creation of one of Christianity’s most enduring books. Bunyan w...

Some Victories Take Generations | August 30 On August 30, 1856, a failed Ohio resort where enslaved attendants had once served vacationing Southern families was reborn as Wilberforce University, a college dedicated to educating Black students. Exactly 111 years later, on August 30, 1967, the United States Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall as the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Two moments. One long road toward freedom and opportunity. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we tra...

August 29 — Two Johns, One Choice What do you do when the truth costs you something? On August 29, we remember two very different moments in history. The church has long observed this date as the martyrdom of John the Baptist, who confronted Herod Antipas with a truth the ruler did not want to obey. Eighteen centuries later, during the Second Battle of Manassas, Union General John Pope received reports that Confederate reinforcements under James Longstreet were arriving — and refused to belie...

On August 28, 430, Augustine died as the Vandals besieged Hippo, convinced that no earthly empire—not even Rome—could ever be the Christian’s final home. Fifteen centuries later, on August 28, 1963, Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and called a divided nation toward a dream of justice and human dignity. Two preachers. Two troubled cities. Two visions of something beyond the brokenness they could see. In this Moments Almanac, we consider Augustine’s City of ...

On August 27, 1883, Krakatoa erupted with a force heard nearly 3,000 miles away, sending deadly tsunamis across the Sunda Strait and changing skies around the world. Centuries earlier, another kind of darkness surrounded Monica of Hippo as she prayed year after year for her wandering son, Augustine. Today’s Moments Almanac brings together a volcano that shook the world and a mother whose persistent prayers helped shape one of Christianity’s greatest theologians. It’s a story for anyone enduring...

On August 26, 1832, Adam Clarke died during a cholera epidemic near London. But his story began with a boy in Ireland whom others considered slow, dull, and unlikely to amount to much academically. They were spectacularly wrong. Clarke became one of the great Methodist preachers and biblical scholars of his generation, mastering ancient languages and spending years producing his monumental commentary on Scripture. The boy who struggled with words devoted his life to helping others understand t...

On August 25, 325, bishops gathered at Nicaea carrying more than theological arguments—some carried the scars of persecution. At the heart of their debate was a question that would shape Christianity for centuries: Who is Jesus Christ? In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore the story behind the Council of Nicaea, the controversy over Arius, the crucial word homoousios—“of one substance”—and the creed that declared Jesus to be “God of God, Light of Light, begotten, not made.” We’ll also h...

On August 24, ninety years apart, two moments of religious persecution unfolded under the same name: St. Bartholomew’s Day. In 1572 Paris, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre left thousands of French Protestants dead. In 1662 England, the Act of Uniformity forced roughly two thousand ministers from their pulpits rather than violate their consciences—including Philip Henry, father of the great Bible commentator Matthew Henry. Two very different kinds of suffering, but one haunting question: What...

On August 23, two very different worlds confronted lies they had learned to live with. Increase Mather, a complicated voice in the aftermath of the Salem witch trials, challenged the dangerous use of spectral evidence. Decades later, the fires of rebellion spread across Saint-Domingue as enslaved people rose against a system built on the lie that one human being could own another. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore Salem, the beginning of the Haitian Revolution, and a sobering quest...

By the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel had every reason to believe his best work was behind him. His operas were struggling, his finances were uncertain, his health had failed him before, and at fifty-six years old, the great composer seemed to be watching his celebrated career fade. Then Charles Jennens handed him a remarkable collection of Scripture tracing the story of Christ—from prophecy and incarnation to suffering, resurrection, and eternal reign. Handel sat down to compose. Twe...

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre—and for hours, no one noticed. Forty-five years earlier, on that same date, hymn writer Civilla D. Martin was born. She would eventually give the church one of its most enduring reminders that while human eyes overlook much, God never does. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we follow the remarkable theft that helped turn the Mona Lisa into a worldwide icon and the story behind Martin’s beloved hymn, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Jes...

On August 20, 1912, William Booth—the nearly blind, aging founder of the Salvation Army—died after a lifetime spent carrying the gospel into places respectable society preferred to ignore. His message was simple and relentless: as long as people suffered, “I’ll fight.” Exactly sixty-five years later, on August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 launched from Cape Canaveral carrying another kind of message: the Golden Record, filled with music, greetings, human sounds, and echoes of life on Earth. It was sent t...

Two brilliant minds, separated by an ocean and 129 years, share the same date in history. On August 19, 1662, mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal died at just thirty-nine years old. Hidden inside his coat was a small parchment recording the night when the great thinker encountered something reason alone could not explain: the living God. Then, on August 19, 1791, Benjamin Banneker — a free Black astronomer and mathematician — wrote Thomas Jefferson a remarkable letter. Armed with Scriptu...

Two searches. Sixteen centuries apart. One remarkable date. On August 18, we remember two women whose influence reached far beyond what anyone might have expected. Helena of Constantinople, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, spent her final years in the Holy Land, where Christian tradition credits her with a search that uncovered the True Cross beneath the streets of Jerusalem. Then, sixteen centuries later, Tennessee became the final state needed to secure ratification of the 19th Amen...

On August 17, two very different claims were staked. One was driven into the gravel of a Yukon creek, where the discovery of gold would ignite the Klondike Gold Rush and send nearly 100,000 fortune-seekers north. The other was staked decades earlier in the life of William Carey, a poor English cobbler who became one of the great pioneers of the modern missionary movement. Carey spent forty-one years in India translating Scripture, establishing schools, training leaders, and carrying the gospe...

On August 16, two lives separated by eighty years tell a larger story about what happens when the gospel refuses to stay safely inside the walls of a church. In 1795, Absalom Jones was ordained a deacon in Philadelphia after once being forced from his knees and told where a Black worshipper was permitted to pray. Eighty years later, on August 16, 1875, revivalist Charles Grandison Finney died at Oberlin after a lifetime of preaching conversion and condemning slavery as a national sin. Two prea...

On August 15, 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. walked through the smoking ruins of Shady Grove Baptist Church in Lee County, Georgia. The church had been burned after opening its doors to voter registration efforts—a reminder that for Black Americans in the segregated South, the simple act of seeking a ballot could come at a terrible cost. Fifteen years earlier, on that same date, India and Pakistan emerged from British rule as independent nations after generations of struggle for self-government. ...

On August 14, 1941, two very different promises were written into history. Off the coast of Newfoundland, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter—eight principles describing their hopes for a freer, more peaceful world after the war. That same day, inside Auschwitz, Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe was dying after volunteering to take the place of a condemned husband and father. One declaration was announced to the world. The other was written quietly in flesh and b...

On August 13, 1521, an empire fell. On August 13, 1587 — sixty-six years later — one man was named. Today's Moments Almanac holds the fall of Tenochtitlán alongside the baptism of Manteo at Roanoke: two colonial-era encounters, two very different outcomes, and a question about what it means to be seen. Take heart. Notice the scattered moments. Share the grace. Prayer: Lord, in a world that so easily reduces people to numbers, casualties, or footnotes, thank You that You call each of us by name....

On August 12, 1771, Baptist preacher John Waller wrote a letter from behind bars in Urbanna Prison, Virginia — dragged off a stage mid-sermon, whipped, jailed, and forbidden even to walk outside until his trial. Almost five years later to the day, George Washington wrote a very different letter from New York, describing an army under twenty thousand men, sick with smallpox, and about to be surrounded by a force that outnumbered them. Two letters, five years apart, describing the same shape of tr...