Edward VI of England (1537–1553) became King of England and Ireland on
28 January 1547 and was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The
son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the
Tudor dynasty and England's first Protestant ruler. During Edward’s
reign, the realm was governed by a Regency Council, because he never
reached maturity. The Council was led from 1547 to 1549 by his uncle
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and from 1550 to 1553 by John
Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, who in 1551 became 1st Duke of
Northumberland. Edward's reign was marked by economic problems,
military withdrawal from Scotland and Boulogne-sur-Mer, and social
unrest that in 1549 erupted into riot and rebellion. It also saw the
transformation of the Anglican Church into a recognisably Protestant
body. Henry VIII had severed the link between the Church of England and
Rome, and during Edward's reign, Protestantism was established for the
first time in England, with reforms that included the abolition of
clerical celibacy and the mass, and the imposition of compulsory
services in English. The architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose Book of Common Prayer has proved
lasting.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VI_of_England>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1077:
Walk to Canossa: Pope Gregory VII lifted the excommunication of Henry
IV after the Holy Roman Emperor made his trek from Speyer to Canossa
Castle to beg the pope for forgiveness for his actions in the
Investiture Controversy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_to_Canossa>
1754:
Horace Walpole first coined the word "serendipity" in a letter he wrote
to a friend, saying that he derived the term from the Persian fairy
tale The Three Princes of Serendip.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Walpole%2C_4th_Earl_of_Orford>
1820:
A Russian expedition led by naval officers Fabian Gottlieb von
Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev approached the coast of
Antarctica.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Gottlieb_von_Bellingshausen>
1855:
A train on the Panama Railway made the world's first transcontinental
crossing by rail, a 48-mile (77 km) trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Panama.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Railway>
1986:
The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its
tenth mission, killing all seven crew members.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
bier (n):
1. A litter to transport the corpse of a dead person
2. A platform or stand where a body or coffin is placed
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bier>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had,
and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.
--Colette
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Colette>