In 1790, the first official lifeboat was tested at sea.

The birthplace of the lifeboat was at the River Tyne in northeast England. The mouth of the river, which opened onto the North Sea, was extremely dangerous. As one sailor described it, the entrance into the harbor was “very narrow, with dangerous rocks on one side and a steep sand bank on the other, with a hard shoal bar across, where the waves of the sea frequently run very high.” In other words, it took a very skilled seaman to safely navigate a sailing ship into the harbor.

After one particularly devastating shipwreck, where more than half of the crew lost their lives as the townspeople watched helplessly on the shore, a local businessman decided something had to be done. Nicolas Fairles organized the institution for “The Preservation of Life from Shipwreck” and offered a reward for anyone who could design a boat that could rescue sailors in the worst conditions at sea. Henry Greathead took the challenge, and it was his design that became the model for the lifeboat. Greathead’s boat, called the Original, was first tested in 1790 on the open sea, and it became a true lifesaver.

Today, we have many devices designed to save lives—seatbelts, safety caps on medications, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers. But the greatest lifesaver is neither a boat, nor a restraining device, nor anything we can hold or see. It is a name—Jesus—the only name that anyone can call upon and be saved forever. The Bible tells us that without Jesus we are lost, dead in our sins. Jesus alone, through his sacrifice on the cross, offers us complete forgiveness for all our wrongdoings and saves us for all eternity.

Now that’s a real lifesaver!

“There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them” (Acts 4:12).

To Do

Buy a pack of LifeSavers® candy. Hand them out to your friends and tell them about the real lifesaver, Jesus!

Also on this day . . .

1487—Bell chimes were invented.

1798—The first brawl in the U.S. House of Representatives took place. Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor.

1847—The town of Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

1882—Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32^nd President of the United States, was born.

From Betsy Schmitt and Dave Veerman, 365 Trivia Twist Devotions: An Almanac of Fun Facts and Spiritual Truth for Every Day of the Year (Cincinnati: Standard, 2005). Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation unless otherwise noted.