September 24, 787: The Second Council of Nicea begins under Pope Hadrian I. The council condemned iconoclasm. The Roman Catholic Church considers this as the seventh of the 21 ecumenical councils; the Eastern Orthodox churches consider this the last of the ecumenical councils (see issue 54: Eastern Orthodoxy).

September 24, 1757: Jonathan Edwards, perhaps America's most brilliant theologian and a father of American revivalism, becomes president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). He served ...