​On July 11, 1656, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher became the first Quakers to arrive in the English colonies that would become the United States. Traveling from England by way of Barbados, the two women came as missionaries, hoping to share their religious beliefs with the residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Instead, Puritan officials viewed them as dangerous religious dissenters. Austin and Fisher were imprisoned, searched for evidence of witchcraft, their books were confiscated and burned, and after five weeks they were forced to return to Barbados aboard the ship that had brought them to Boston.

On May 8, 1845, a gathering of Baptist leaders in Augusta, Georgia, created a new denomination that would grow into one of the most influential religious bodies in the United States. The Southern Baptist Convention is now the largest Protestant denomination in the country and the world’s largest Baptist organization. From the beginning, it functioned as a network of independent churches that cooperated in missions and ministry while maintaining local autonomy.

In April 1912, as New York City absorbed the first reports of the Titanic disaster, another event unfolded along the waterfront: the laying of the cornerstone for the Seamen’s Church Institute’s new headquarters at 25 South Street. The timing gave the ceremony a somber tone. As news of the sinking spread, those gathered were already confronting the dangers faced by people who worked at sea, dangers the Institute had long sought to address. Founded in 1834, the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) began in a bustling port city where sailors were essential to the economy but often overlooked or exploited. 

​On the night of February 3, 1943, the U.S. Army transport Dorchester was crossing the North Atlantic when it was struck by a German torpedo. The ship sank in less than thirty minutes, killing 672 of the 902 people aboard. Amid the chaos and freezing darkness, four U.S. Army chaplains chose to remain on deck, helping others reach safety. They were Rev. George L. Fox (Methodist), Rabbi Alexander D. Goode (Reform Judaism), Rev. Clark V. Poling (Dutch Reformed), and Father John P. Washington (Roman Catholic).

​Christmas was not always a celebrated holiday in the United States. In fact, it was once outlawed in some colonies. In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law called Penalty for Keeping Christmas, declaring such “superstitious” festivals a “great dishonor of God.” Anyone caught feasting or taking the day off could be fined five shillings. The law was repealed in 1681, but suspicion lingered. While colonists in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York observed the day freely, many New Englanders rejected it as frivolous. After the American Revolution, Christmas fell further out of favor, dismissed as an English custom. It would not become a national holiday until 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant declared it a legal, unpaid holiday for federal employees in Washington, D.C.