Free and Candid Disquisitions is an anonymously published 1749 pamphlet written and compiled by John Jones, a Welsh clergyman of the Church of England. The work promoted a series of reforms to the church and the Book of Common Prayer that Jones hoped would allow the more Protestant and independent Dissenters to be reintegrated into the church. Jones's proposals included shortening the Sunday liturgies, removing Catholic ritual influences, and providing improved hymns and psalms. Several responding texts were written, both lauding and criticizing Jones's work. While the proposals were not accepted by the Church of England, Jones's suggested alterations to the prayer book and advocacy of privately published liturgies influenced several Dissenter liturgical texts and early editions of the American Episcopal Church's prayer book. The pamphlet remained a major influence on proposed liturgical changes in the Church of England until the 19th-century Tractarian movement.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_Candid_Disquisitions

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1903:

Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaimed a republic, which existed for ten days before Ottoman forces destroyed the town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kru%C5%A1evo_Republic

1936:

African-American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination at the games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens

1971:

Fighting Dinosaurs, a fossil specimen featuring a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops in combat, was unearthed in the Djadochta Formation of Mongolia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoceratops

1997:

The Sky Tower, then the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere at 328 m (1,076 ft), opened in Auckland, New Zealand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Tower_%28Auckland%29

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

get in the boat and row: (intransitive, idiomatic) To make a substantial effort, especially in cooperation with others in a group; also, to perform one's share of work. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/get_in_the_boat_and_row

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone.   --Christopher Columbus https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus