Today in History
May 18
1955: Library of Congress: Educator and political leader Mary McLeod Bethune died at the age of eighty in Daytona Beach, Florida. Born in Mayesville, South Carolina, in 1875, Bethune was one of the last of Samuel and Patsy McLeod's seventeen children. Former slaves, her parents were leaders of Mayesville's African-American community. With help from a patron, she attended Scotia Seminary in North Carolina and Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After nearly a decade of teaching, she opened her own school, now called Bethune-Cookman University, in Daytona Beach.
1920: Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born in Poland. He became a priest and in 1978, was elected by the College of Cardinals as pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He took the name Pope John Paul II and served as pope until his death in 2005.
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