April 27, 1667: Blind, bitter, and poor, Puritan poet John Milton sells for ten pounds the copyright for Paradise Lost—a book that would influence English thought and language nearly as much as the King James Version and the plays of Shakespeare. The theme of the epic appears in its opening lines: "Of man's disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe, / With loss of Eden.
April 27, 1775: Moravian minister and missionary Peter Boehler dies. He met John Wesley in 1737 while both were sailing to minister in America, and his assurance of faith and belief in joyous, instantaneous conversion left a permanent mark on Wesley (see issue 1: Nicolaus Zinzendorf and the Moravians).
