1874 - Religion

Religion

Chicago's Free Religious Society hears an address May 3 from agnostic lawyer and orator Robert Green Ingersoll, now 40, who praises individualists who think for themselves. In "Heretics and Heresies," he condemns churches and other institutions that condemn free thinkers. Clergymen inveigh against Ingersoll, but he will attract huge audiences for his lectures on "a religion of humanity" that would venerate only "inquiry, investigation, and thought."

Constantinople's 1,337-year-old mosque Hagia Sophia installs calligraphy disks bearing the name of Allah and that of the caliph Abu Bakr.