April 14, 1759: George Frideric Handel, composer of the oratorio Messiah, dies at age 74 in London.
April 14, 1775: America's first society to abolish slavery organizes in Philadelphia.
May 4, 1923: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, editor of the British journal The Expositor (which included articles by many leading scholars) and of a 50-volume Expositor's Bible (published 1888-1905), dies.
May 4, 1493: In the bull "Inter caetera," Pope Alexander VI sets the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese lands in the New World.