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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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