The Book of Mormon went on sale today in 1830, for the first time, in a bookstore in the town of Palmyra, New York. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, said he had been translating the book for the previous seven years from a set of golden plates shown him by an angel. The first edition numbered 5,000 copies. In 2018, a copy of the first edition sold for $80,000.
Britain’s first official cremation took place today in Woking, England, in 1885. The Woking Crematorium had been completed six years earlier, but local people had lobbied for its use to be prohibited. The crematee was Jeanette Pickersgill, a painter and poet.
It is St William of Norwich’s day. An unidentified 12 year-old boy, working as an apprentice tanner, his body was found in a forest in the 12th century. Five years later, his murder remained unsolved, but it was decided that his name was William and that he had been ritually murdered by Jews. This was the first time such a story had been dreamt up, but tragically it wasn’t the last.
The first peace treaty between the modern state of Israel and an Arab nation was signed at the White House by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel today in 1979. The treaty was brokered by US President Jimmy Carter.
Image: Jon Collier