Today is Monday; 1st of the Iranian month of Azar 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 21st of the Islamic month of Safar 1438 lunar hijri; and November 21, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

630 solar years ago, on this day in 1386 AD, the Turkic conqueror, Amir Timur, captured Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and took King Bagrat V as captive to Samarqand, because of the latter’s alliance with the Khan of the Golden Horde, Tokhtamysh, with whom Timur was engaged in a fearsome war in what is now southern Russia. Bagrat was later released and restored as king of Georgia.

415 lunar years ago, on this day in 1023 AH, Jahan Ara Begum, the eldest daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan and his Iranian wife, Empress Mumtaz Mahal, was born. She was highly educated and well versed in Persian and Arabic, and was a writer, painter and poet. She was active in state affairs and favoured her brother, Dara Shikoh, the heir-designate, who was killed by her younger brother, the future Emperor Aurangzeb. On her father's imprisonment in the fort of Agra by Aurangzeb, she devotedly served him and after his death was reluctantly reconciled with Aurangzeb. She remained a spinster and died at the age of 68 in Delhi.

387 lunar years ago, on this day in 1051 AH, the prominent Muslim scientist and theologian, Baha od-Din Mohammad Ibn Hussain al-Ameli, known popularly as Shaikh Bahai, completed the writing of the book “Miftah al-Falah” (Keys to Welfare). This excellent manual of prayers and supplications has been translated several times into Persian. The best translation is the one undertaken over three centuries ago by the migrant Iranian scholar to the court of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Haiderabad-Deccan in India, Ali bin Tayfour Bastami, and recently printed in Iran. Among the translations in Iran mention could be made of the one done by Sadra-e Tabrizi. The Arabic text of “Miftah al-Falah” has been published several times in Iran, Lebanon, and Egypt.

322 solar years ago, on this day in 1694 AD, French author and philosopher, Francois-Marie Arouet, famous as Voltaire, was born. He was imprisoned in Bastille twice during his lifetime and was deported to England for three years. These incidents made him an opponent of the French regime, as is evident from his writings. He popularized the English scientist Isaac Newton's work in France by arranging a translation of "Principia Mathematica" to which he added his own commentary. Voltaire's commentary bridged the gap between non-scientists and Newton's ideas at a time in France when the pre-Newtonian views of Descartes were still prevalent. He has penned more than fifty works, some of which are considered as best examples of the French classical prose.

233 solar years ago, on this day in 1783 AD, for the first time in history, a balloon was successfully sent up in the air. It had two passengers, including the French physicist, Francois de Rozier. This French physicist thought about building an object for flying during his student years and finally when Montgolfier Brothers made the first balloon, Rozier also built a balloon and went up in the air with it. This physicist crashed and was killed during a flight over the English Channel.

225 solar years ago, on this day in 1791 AD, Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic. In 1804, he assumed totalitarian powers and declared himself Emperor.

210 solar years ago, on this day in 1806 AD, the Berlin Decree was issued by French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, following his victory over Prussia (Germany) at the Battle of Jena. The decree forbade all European countries under the influence of France from any trade with Britain.

170 solar years ago, on this day in 1846 AD, the word anesthesia was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a letter to William Thomas Green Morton, the surgeon who gave the first public demonstration of the pain-killing effects of ether.

139 solar years ago, on this day in 1877 AD, Thomas Edison announced invention of his "talking machine" - the tin-foil cylinder recorder that preceded the phonograph. He appears to have envisioned it as a business dictation machine. Earlier in September the same year, he wrote that its purpose was "to record automatically the speech of a very rapid speaker upon paper; from which he reproduces the same Speech immediately or years afterwards preserving the characteristics of the speakers voice so that persons familiar with it would at once recognize it." The indented tin foil, however, would survive only a few playings. By the first public showing of a phonograph, which took place in New York City in early February 1878, its practical applications had not yet been realized.

90 solar years ago, on this day in 1926, Iran’s master classical musician Gholam Hussein Khan Darvish, died at the age of 54 in an accident, when his carriage was hit by a lorry automobile. It is said he was the first Iranian to be killed in a car accident. An excellent player of the Tar, he added a sixth cord to this instrument in order to extend its tuning possibilities and to enhance its sound. He invented 'pish-daramad', a free-standing composition played at the beginning of a performance. He visited Europe and was honoured by France He trained many students.

63 solar years ago, on this day in 1953 AD, the prominent jurisprudent, Ayatollah Habibollah Askari Ishtehardi, passed away at the age of 61 in the holy city of Qom. Born in Ishtehard near Karaj, west of Tehran, he attained the status of Ijtehad at the famous Islamic seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq. His teacher, the celebrated Grand Ayatollah Mirza Abu’l-Hassan Isfahani, sent him to holy Samarra in northern Iraq, where he taught jurisprudence for 30 years. A month after his return to Iran, he passed away in holy Qom.   

54 solar years ago, on this day in 1962 AD, China declared a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War after a month of fighting. The war was fought in harsh mountainous terrain and freezing temperatures at altitudes of over 4,000 meters. The Sino-Indian War was also noted for the non-deployment of the navy or air force by either the Chinese or Indians. A disputed Himalayan border was the main pretext for war, but other issues played a role, since the violent border incidents after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India had granted asylum to the Dalai Lama.

31 solar years ago, on this day in 1985 AD, former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested while spying for the illegal Zionist entity called Israel. This was a rare case of a surrogate state spying against its own godfather who, because of shared animosity against Muslims and Arabs, never withheld any sensitive information or sophisticate military technology. In 1987 Pollard, who is a Jew, confessed that he passed classified documents to Israel, and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. The Zionist entity has continued to lobby for his release, and in 1995 on this same day, it granted citizenship to this American Jew.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate, Abdus-Salaam, who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow, died at the age of 70. Each had independently formulated a theory explaining the underlying unity of the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. His hypothetical equations, which demonstrated an underlying relationship between the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force, postulated that the weak force must be transmitted by hitherto-undiscovered particles known as weak vector bosons, or W and Z bosons. Weinberg and Glashow reached a similar conclusion using a different line of reasoning. The existence of the W and Z bosons was eventually verified in 1983 by researchers using particle accelerators at CERN.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, World Television Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly through resolution 51/205 (ratified on 17 December 1996). The day recognizes that television plays a major role in presenting different issue that affect people. It is day to renew the commitments of the governments, organizations and individuals, to support the development of television media in providing unbiased information about important issues and events that affect society.

4 solar years ago, on this day in 2012 AD in Afghanistan, 23-year old Seyyed Mohammad, a farmer from Karim Dad village, was abducted by US occupation forces. He was apparently subjected to torture and abuse, like so many Afghans detained by US troops. Several months later on May 21, 2013, near a former US Special Forces base in Wardak province, his footless body was found. Tens of thousands of Afghans have been killed by the US forces.

AS/SS