TODAY IN CHURCH HISTORY: 20 July

[Hemidakota]

1831 - The Prophet Joseph Smith receives Doctrine and Covenants 57, indicating that Jackson County, Missouri, is the location for the "City of Zion."

1833 - A meeting of citizens of Jackson County, Missouri, meet and demand that the Saints leave the county. A mob destroys the Church's printing press that was being used to print the Book of Commandments, and tar and feather Bishop Edward Partridge and Charles Allen.

1837 - The ship Garrick arrives near Liverpool, England with Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Willard Richards, Joseph Fielding, John Goodson, Isaac Russell, and John Snyder, on board. Elders Kimball, Hyde, Richards, and Goodson jumped into a small boat and were rowed toward the shore. "When within leaping distance Elder Kimball sprang from the boat as if impelled by some superior power and alighted on the steps of the dock, followed instantly by Elders Hyde and Richards." With excitement and purpose, they opened the first overseas mission of the Church in the British Isles.

1847 - All the pioneer companies were on the move today. Brigham Young's sick group reached the site where the middle group had camped the night before. Three more wagons of sick people were camped there when Brigham Young's group arrived. The middle group arrived to where Orson Pratt's advance party had camped the night before. Orson Pratt's advance group traveled down Big Mountain Creek and then traveled up a steep grade to the top of the ridge which became known as Little Mountain. They then descended down Emigration Canyon to within 1 ½ miles of the mouth of the canyon where they made camp.

1897 - To open the first day of celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the pioneers arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, President Wilford Woodruff dedicates the Brigham Young Monument that stands today between Temple Square and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

1951 - Because the Korean War reduced the number of young men available to serve as full-time missionaries, the First Presidency issues a call for Seventies to help with missionary work.

1985 - One hundred thousand people attend a Church dance festival at the Rose Bowl in southern California.

1995 - The Presbyterian General Assembly of the United States adopts a resolution that the LDS Church is "a new and emerging religion that expresses allegiance to Jesus Christ in terms used within the Christian tradition."