Today is Wednesday; 8th of the Iranian month of Esfand 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 21st of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1440 lunar hijri; and February 27, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1747 solar years ago, on this day in 272 AD, Constantine I, who imposed the Pauline Creed on the Roman Empire, was born in Dardania in the Balkans. His father, Flavius Valerius Constantius, was an army officer, and it is not known whether his mother Helena was a wife or a concubine. When his father became deputy emperor of the west in 293, Constantine was sent east, where he became a military tribune under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius – notorious for their persecution of the monotheist followers of Prophet Jesus and those who later came to be known as Christians. In 305, his father was raised to the rank of Augustus, or senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled to the west to campaign in Britannia. Acclaimed as emperor by the army on his father's death in 306, Constantine emerged victorious in civil wars against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both the west and the east by 324. He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and named it New Rome, but it was called Constantinople in his honour. Later the city served as capital of Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire for over a thousand years, before falling in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks, who renamed it Islambol (Istanbul), and made it capital of their empire for the next 470 years. Constantine has earned lasting notoriety for persecuting Arianism and the purely monotheistic followers of Prophet Jesus. The form of Christianity he imposed is actually the innovation of Paul the Hellenized Jew, who was a fierce opponent of Prophet Jesus, but after him, claimed to be his follower in order to distort the monotheistic message of the Messiah, by coining the weird concept of Trinity that was more closer to the Roman pantheon of deities.

1639 solar years ago, on this day in 380 AD, the Edict of Thessalonica was issued by Roman Emperor Theodosius I, with co-emperors Gratian and Valentinian II, forcing all Roman citizens to convert to the Trinitarian form of Christianity, or else be branded as heretics subject to punishment. This weird concept of ‘godfather’, ‘godson’ and the ‘holy ghost’ – an invention of Paul the Hellenized Jew who was a staunch opponent of Prophet Jesus and after him feigned to be his follower – was designed to suit the polytheist beliefs of European pagans, in opposition to the monotheist message of the Virgin-born Messiah.

1379 lunar years ago, on this day in 61 AH, Hazrat Omm Kulthoum (SA), the second and youngest daughter of Imam Ali and Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA) was born in Medina in the lifetime of her maternal grandfather, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Like her elder sister, Hazrat Zainab (SA), and brothers, Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS), she was a picture of virtue, and on growing up married her paternal first cousin Awn ibn Ja’far at-Tayyar, since as a member of the spotlessly pure Ahl al-Bayt, no other man was worthy of her hand, except a faithful Hashemite. Awn was martyred in 38 AH in the War of Siffeen. Omm Kulthoum (SA) was present in Karbala at history’s most heartrending tragedy; was taken in chains along with the rest of ladies and children of the Prophet’s blessed household to the court of the tyrant Yazid; delivered memorable sermons, especially in Kufa, to unmask the hypocrisy of the Omayyad regime; and on return to Medina recited the famous elegy “Madinato Jaddona la taqbalina…” (O City of our Grandfather, don’t accept our coming).

1121 lunar years ago, on this day in 319 AH, famous hadith scholar, Mohammad bin Abdus-Samad al-Baghdadi, passed away. Like his ancestors he dedicated his efforts to collecting authentic narrations from the original sources, quoting Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) and Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He has also chronicled the event of the Treaty of Hudaibiyya including the Prophet's statement on this day regarding the “wilayah” or divinely-decreed authority of Imam Ali (AS), through Jaber ibn Abdullah al-Ansari. His compilation of hadith is esteemed by researchers. One of his narrations from the Prophet reads: “Those who like to live like me, die like me, and enter the Paradise that Allah has promised me, should follow (Imam) Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) and his (infallible) progeny, because they will not deviate you from the path of guidance and will never lead you astray.”

1056 lunar years ago, on this day in 384 AH, literary figure, historian, and judge, Muhassin ibn Ali at-Tanoukhi, passed away at the age of 55. His books include “al-Faraj Ba’d ash-Shiddah” on historical and social developments, and “al-Masajed”. He also left behind a Diwan of Arabic poetry.

782 lunar years ago, on this day in 658 AH, Damascus fell to the Iran-based dynasty of the Ilkhanid Mongols as the ruling Ayyubid Kurds (descendants of Salah od-Din) succumbed to the onslaught, two years after Hulagu Khan had sacked Baghdad and ended the Abbasid caliphate. The attack was led by Kitbugha Noyan, a Turkic Christian general of the Mongols, who built up an alliance with King Hethum I of Armenia and the European Crusader ruler of Antioch, Bohemond VI. The combined forces with the assistance of the Seljuqid Turk auxiliaries had earlier driven out the Ayyubids from Aleppo. On the fall of Damascus, the three Christian warlords (i.e. Kitbugha, Hethum and Bohemond) entered the Omayyad Mosque, turned it into a cathedral, and held mass at what is said to be the shrine of John the Baptist.

510 solar years ago, on this day in 1509 AD, nine years after the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese explorer, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, Portugal formally established its hegemony on this large swathe of South America. Until the independence of Brazil in the year 1822, France and Holland on several occasions tried to seize this territory but failed. Over the centuries, the Portuguese forcibly brought three million black people from Africa to Brazil for forced labor in sugarcane plantations. At the same time, the persecution of the indigenous Latin American people led to numerous uprisings against the Portuguese colonialists; which were all brutally suppressed. Although Brazil gained its independence in the year 1822, the presence and infiltration of the Portuguese in this country continued for several more decades.

328 solar years ago, on this day in 1691 AD, English publisher, Edward Cave, who founded “The Gentleman's Magazine” in 1731, was born in Newton near Rugby in Warwickshire. “The Gentleman's Magazine” was the first to use the term magazine for a periodical from the French word magazine, meaning "storehouse". A monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry, it ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. The famous lexicographer Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with “The Gentleman's Magazine”.

212 solar years ago, on this day in 1807 AD, American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was born in Portland, Maine. His famous poems include “The Children's Hour”, “Evangeline” and “What is time?” He died in 1882.

175 solar years ago, on this day in 1844 AD, Dominica, which the Haitian revolutionary leader, Toussaint Louverture, had seized from the Spanish in 1801, declared its independence. In 1916, it was occupied by the US, which 8 years later in 1924, due to the resistance of the Dominican people, was forced to sign a treaty for gradual withdrawal of its occupation forces. Colonel Rafael Trujillo staged a coup in 1930 and for 30 years until his assassination, he ruled the country. Thereafter, the US has often interfered in this country, which shares the Hispaniola Island with Haiti.

140 solar years ago, on this day in 1879, AD, saccharin, the artificial sweetener, was accidentally discovered by Constantin Fahlberg, while he was researching coal tar compounds for Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. With hands unwashed since leaving his laboratory work, during meal he accidentally discovered its intensely sweet taste when his fingers touched his lips. He subsequently obtained patents on its synthesis, and with his uncle, Dr. Adolf List, started a factory to produce and market it. Fahlberg became wealthy by taking the outcome of a laboratory experiment and pursuing a commercial path for it.

117 solar years ago, on this day in 1902 AD US novelist John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His works are: “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men”.

87 solar years ago, on this day in 1932 AD, neutron was discovered by Dr. James Chadwick at Cambridge University of Britain. He suggested that the new radiation consisted of uncharged particles of approximately the mass of the proton, and he performed a series of experiments verifying his suggestion. These uncharged particles were called neutrons, apparently from the Latin root for neutral and the Greek ending -on (by imitation of electron and proton). Neutron has been a key to the production of nuclear power. In 1933 it was realized that it might mediate a nuclear chain reaction. When nuclear fission was discovered in 1938, it became clear that if the process also produced neutrons, this might be a mechanism to produce neutrons for chain reaction. This was proven in 1939, opening the path to nuclear power production. These findings led to the first self-sustaining, man-made, nuclear chain reaction in 1942, and its subsequent misuse resulted in 1945 in the production of the first nuclear weapons, which the US criminally dropped in an act of state terrorism on the unsuspecting Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when World War 2 had virtually ended.

77 solar years ago, on this day in 1942 AD, during World War II, major air strikes of Japanese warplanes against the Allied Powers’ naval units started. These operations took place in the Sea of Java and destroyed many US, Australian and British warships.

43 solar years ago, on this day in 1976 AD, the Spanish occupied territory of Western Sahara, declared its independence under auspices of the Polisario Front as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Because of western and Arab reactionary support to Morocco, SADR remains a partially recognized state that controls only 20-to-25% of its territory, as the rest remains under Moroccan occupation. The claimed capital of the SADR is El-Aaiún, while the temporary capital has been moved from Bir Lehlou to Tifariti. The Sahrawi Republic maintains diplomatic relations with 40 UN states, and is a full member of the African Union.

33 solar years ago, on this day in 1986 AD, Iranian singer, Gholam-Hussein Banaan, passed away after a long illness at the age of 75. He started his singing career on Iran Radio in 1942, and two years later after foundation of the National Music Society, he started grooming students. He was a master of traditional and classical Iranian music as well as Iran’s modern music. At Iran Radio he created 450 songs, which have remained to this day as highly valuable works on Iran’s musical scene.

32 solar years ago, on this day in 1987 AD, Hussain Kharrazi, one of the brilliant young commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), achieved martyrdom in the “Karbala 5” Operations against the invading Ba’thist forces in the southwestern theatre of the war imposed on Iran by the US through Saddam. He was commander of the Imam Husain (AS) 14 Battalion. Three years earlier during the Khaibar Operations in the Majnoon islands, he had lost his right hand – as a devotee of Hazrat Abbas (AS), the valiant brother of the Martyr of Karbala Imam Husain (AS), who had lost both his hands during the battle with the forces of Yazid the tyrant. Hussain Kharrazi had joined the Basij forces in its formative years, serving with distinction against the anti-revolutionaries in the Turkman Sahra region and later in Kurdistan. On start of the imposed war and fall of the port city of Khorramshahr, he was dispatched to the battlefronts, where he proved to be an astute strategist during the “Thamen al-Aimma”, “Fath al-Mobin”, “Bayt al-Moqaddas”, “Khaibar”, “Badr”, “Wa’l-Fajr 8”, and “Karbala 4” and “5” Operations.

27 lunar years ago, on this day in 1413 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hussain Mir-Jahani Tabatabaei passed away at the age of 94 and was buried in his hometown Isfahan. A product of the Islamic seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, on return to Iran he lived mostly in holy Mashhad, teaching and writing books. He was noted for his devotion to the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. Among his works are: “Misbah al-Balagha”, “Nawa’eb ad-Dohour”, and “Wilayat-e Kulliyeh”.

22 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, a 6.1 earthquake at Ardebil in northwest Iran struck at 4:27 p.m. local time. The quake damaged 110 villages and killed some 3,000 people. A second 5.1 quake followed in 2 days.

17 solar years ago, on this day in 2002 AD, anarchists torched a train, the Sabarmati Express, in Godhra in Gujarat state of India, while it was returning from Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the Hindus were campaigning for building a temple on the ruins of the criminally destroyed Babri Mosque, and then blamed on the Muslims the incident in which 59 Hindus were reportedly killed, in order to ignite flames of communal violence. Hindu anarchists went rampaging throughout Gujarat state and in the following days slaughtered some 3,000 Muslim men, women and children, as the state government of Chief Minister Narendra Modi – currently the prime minister of India – not just mutely watched the massacre, but its police and security forces helped the anarchist mobs.

9 solar years ago, on this day in 2010 AD, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile, toppling homes, collapsing bridges and plunging trucks into the fractured earth. The death toll was over 700, while 1.5 million Chileans were affected and 150,000 left homeless. A tsunami caused by the quake swept across the Pacific, devastating coastal communities near the epicenter. Damages were later estimated at $30 billion.

8 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, former Turkish premier, Najm od-Din Erbakan, passed away at the age of 84. Born in the northern Turkish city of Sinop he studied Mechanical Engineering at Istanbul University, on the completion of which he left for Germany to earn a PhD at Aachen University. On return to Turkey, he became a university professor in 1967. He entered politics in 1969, and was soon elected MP. He founded several Islamic-oriented parties, which the military authorities forcibly dissolved. He became leader of the Welfare Islamic Party in 1987, and in 1996 was democratically elected as Prime Minister. His policy of expansion of Turkey's relations with Muslim countries was unbearable for the military, the Zionist regime of Israel, and the US. For this reason, the military officers forced him to resign.

3 solar years ago, on this day in 2016 AD, prominent Iranian Film director, Farajollah Salahshour, passed away at the age of 63. Born in Qazvin, he directed several popular historical and religious films such as “Prophet Job”, “Prophet Joseph”, and “Men of Angelos” – the last named a serial on the Qur’anic account of the Seven Sleepers of the Cave, who because of their firm faith in monotheism had fled to the mountains to escape persecution from the pagan Romans.

AS/SS