Marcus and Narcissa Whitman set out for Oregon shortly after their wedding day, as missionaries to the native Americans. After a long and difficult journey across America, they set up a mission compound and struggled with their missionary work for more than a decade before they were killed by an Indian tribe in 1847. Their story is told in the December 10 entry of Robert Morgan’s book On This Day in Christian History: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories About Saints, Martyrs and Heroes.
Some other randomly selected stories: January 11: Henry Ward Beecher’s scandal; March 13: the Gutenberg Bible; May 6: the overthrow of Pope Clement VII; June 26: how Francis Schaeffer met his wife Edith when they both rose to refute a Unitarian speaker; August 12: the martyrdom of Euplius at his own insistence; September 14: John Chrysostom the great orator; October 20: the papal bull prohibiting self-flagellation.
While many of the stories are encouraging and inspiring, others are less so. There are plenty of martyrs meeting horrible ends, and plenty of heretics and villains who did great harm to the cause of Christ. There is one page for each story, with a relevant Bible verse at the bottom of the page. A random check of some of the historical facts and dates suggests that the author has aimed more at telling good stories than at ensuring factual precision.
In my view the book is not a suitable substitute for a devotional book, and most readers are not likely to want to read large amounts of it at a time, so it is best suited to the occasional dip. Nonetheless, it is important for Christians to be aware of Christian history, including the unsavoury elements, and this book helps by providing glimpses of Christian history in an accessible manner.
Disclosure: I received my copy of the book for free from BookSneeze.