July 14

John Keble preached 'National Apostasy' at St Mary's, Oxford, an occasion widely regarded as the start of the Oxford Movement.

Mahendranath Gupta, the schoolteacher-devotee who recorded Ramakrishna's conversations in the Bengali 'Kathamrita' (translated as 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'), was born near Kolkata.

Heinrich Zimmern, the first professor of Assyriology at Leipzig and a pioneer in the study of Babylonian religious texts, was born in Graben.

Gertrude Bell, the traveller and archaeologist who would found the Iraq Museum, was born at Washington New Hall in County Durham.

Narada Maha Thera, a Sri Lankan Theravada monk, translator and Buddhist missionary who taught across Asia and the West, was born in Colombo.

Pema Chödrön, an American-born Buddhist nun and author known for widely read teachings in the Tibetan Shambhala tradition, was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City.

Swami Sivananda Saraswati, physician-turned-monk who founded the Divine Life Society at Rishikesh and authored over 200 works on Yoga and Vedanta, died on the banks of the Ganges.