Today is Wednesday; 11th of the Iranian month of Esfand 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 2nd of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1438 lunar hijri; and March 1, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2103 solar years ago, on this day in 86 BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, as part of the expansionist policies of the Roman Republic, entered Athens at the head of an army to remove the philosopher- king, Aristion, who was supported by troops of Mithridates VI of Pontus and Armenia Minor. Mithridates, which in Old Persian means “Gift of Mithra” was a prince of mixed Iranian and Greek ancestry, who ruled what is now northern Turkey. He claimed descent from Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, and Regent Antipater, the Greek General of Alexander of Macedon. As protector of Greece and Hellenistic civilization, he regarded the Romans as barbarians, and fought three wars against them until his defeat and death during his 57-year reign.

1245 lunar years ago, on this day in 193 AH, Haroun ar-Rashid, the 5th caliph of the usurper Abbasid Dynasty, died in Khorasan, in northeastern Iran, and was buried in Tous, in what is now the city of Mashhad, after a tyrannical rule of 23 years, during which he cruelly martyred over 60 descendants of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny), including the most noblest of them all, the 7th Infallible Imam, Musa al-Kazem (AS). Haroun was born to Mahdi al-Abbasi in Rayy, which is a suburb of modern Tehran today, and his mother was a Yemeni concubine of dubious character, named Khayzaran. He seized power after the suspicious death of his elder brother Hadi al-Abbasi. He consolidated his rule over the vast realm from North Africa up to the borders of China and India, largely through the administrative abilities of the Iranian Barmakid family, whose head Yahya Barmaki was made prime minister, followed by his sons. The crafty Haroun gradually liquidated the Barmakids and behaved ruthlessly with the followers of the Prophet’s Household and other Muslims who opposed his immoral and illegitimate rule. He died in Khorasan at the age of 45 years while on his way to suppress a rebellion in Kabul, in what is now Afghanistan. Today there is no sign of his rotten grave, while the sprawling golden-domed mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS), the Prophet’s 8th Infallible Heir in Mashhad, beckons millions of pilgrims from all over the world, as testimony to the triumph of the Ahl al-Bayt over the usurper caliphs.

758 solar years ago, on this day in 1260 AD, Hulagu Khan’s Mongol army, led by his Christian general Kitbuqa, seized Damascus, sixteen days after the sack of Aleppo and two years after the infamous destruction of Baghdad. The Buddhist Mongols and their Armenian and Crusader Allies, desecrated numerous mosques in Damascus and held a Christian Mass in the Grand Omayyad Mosque. The three Christian generals, Kitbuqa the Mongol, the Armenian Hetoum, and Bohemond the European Crusader ruler of occupied Palestine, celebrated their triumph in Damascus slaughtering Muslims and ending the rule of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty of Syria.

749 lunar years ago, on this day in 689 AH, the Turco-Afghan Khalji Dynasty came to power in the northern subcontinent after the decline of the Mamluk or Slave Dynasty of Turks. It was founded by Jalal od-Din Firuz, who was installed as king by the Turkic, Persian, Arab and Indo-Muslim aristocrats in place of the weak and debauched ruler, Kayqobad. Jalal od-Din was succeeded by his nephew, Ali Gorshasp, who took the title of Ala od-Din and during his 20-year rule, expanded the kingdom to include much of the Deccan (southern India) as well as today’s Pakistan, Bangladesh and eastern parts of Afghanistan. The court language, like that of the previous dynasty, was Persian, and Islam was promoted in India along with scientific achievements, art, and architecture during the 30-year rule. The Khaljis, who repelled several Mongol invasions, were replaced by the Tughlaqs, also of Turkic origin.

455 solar years ago, on this day in 1562 AD, the Bloodbath of Vassy occurred in France when General de Guise allowed members of the Catholic sect of Christianity to massacre 1200 Huguenots (members of the Protestant sect of Christianity), many of them during a church service, marking the start of the French Wars of Religion that lasted till the Edict of Nantes in 1598 (and well beyond), resulting in the killing of over four million people from both the sects. Europe has a bloody record of inter-Christian sectarian conflicts that raged for several centuries, since unlike Islam, Christian denominations have fundamental differences over the nature of God, Prophet Jesus, and the Virgin Mary.

452 solar years ago, on this day in 1565 AD, the city of Rio de Janeiro was founded in the colony of Brazil by the Portuguese, on the western shores of Guanabara Bay and was named Sao Sebastiao. Since the Guanabara Bay inlet was the site of the first landing by the Portuguese in 1502 it was named Rio de Janeiro (January River) – a name that stuck to the new city whose proper name Sao Sebastiao was gradually dropped. Until early in the 18th century, the city was threatened or invaded by several, mostly French, pirates. In 1763, the colonial administration in Portuguese America was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. The city remained primarily a colonial capital until 1808, when the Portuguese royal family and most of the associated Lisbon nobles, fleeing Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Portugal, moved to Rio de Janeiro. The kingdom of Portugal's capital was transferred to Rio de Janeiro, which thus, became the only European capital outside of Europe. As there was no physical space or urban structure to accommodate hundreds of noblemen who arrived suddenly, many inhabitants were simply evicted from their homes. The Portuguese kidnapped from Africa and forced into slavery in Brazil hundreds of thousands of black people, to the extent that in 1840, the number of these slaves in Rio de Janeiro alone had reached 220,000. When Prince Pedro proclaimed the independence of Brazil in 1822, he decided to keep Rio de Janeiro as the capital of his new empire. Rio continued as the capital of Brazil after 1889, when the monarchy was replaced by a republic. It remained the capital of Brazil until the founding of Brasilia as the new capital.

304 solar years ago, on this day in 1713 AD, the siege and destruction of Fort Neoheroka was begun by the British, Dutch, and Germans in North Carolina against the local Amerindians, resulting in the slaughter of almost a thousand Amerindians of the Tuscarora nation and the imprisonment of hundreds of women and children who were sold into slavery in the Caribbean so they could not return to their homeland. The year before, the white men had killed over three hundred Tuscarora people and sold into slavery over a hundred women and children. The 4-year Tuscarora War (1711-to-1715) which resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Amerindians was the bloodiest conflict at the end of which the interior of North Carolina was effectively opened up for European colonization. When the first Europeans arrived in North Carolina in the 1650s, the Tuscarora had lived in peace with them, at a time when nearly every other colony in America was actively involved in some form of conflict with Native Americans. However, the white settlers increasingly encroached on Tuscarora land, raided villages to take slaves, and introduced epidemic diseases. After their defeat, most of the Tuscarora migrated north towards what later became New York where they were joined their Iroquoian cousins, before their ultimate annihilation by the white. The US has a very bleak and bloody record of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

206 solar years ago, on this day in 1811 AD, leaders of the former Mamluk or slave dynasty were massacred during a banquet at the Cairo citadel by Egypt’s new ruler, the Albanian general, Mohammad Ali Pasha, who had been sent as viceroy to Cairo by the Ottoman Sultan, following the end of Napoleon of France’s brief occupation.  Mohammad Ali modernized Egypt and the dynasty he established lasted till 1952 when King Farouq was overthrown by the military coup of Mohammad Najib and Jamal Abdun-Nasser.

202 solar years ago, on this day in 1815 AD, the 100-day restoration of the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte over France started following his escape from his place of exile, the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea after ten months. Finally, Napoleon was defeated by the combined armies of Britain and Prussia at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, and was deported to the remote Saint Helena Island in the Atlantic Ocean, where he died six years later.

146 solar years ago, on this day in 1871 AD, following the defeat of France by Germany, the French national parliament dethroned Napoleon III and abolished the monarchic system, 67 years after Napoleon Bonaparte had declared himself as emperor by annulling the republican constitution of the French Revolution of 1789.

125 solar years ago, on this day in 1892 AD, the Japanese literary figure and author, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, was born in Tokyo. He is considered as one of the founders of modern literature in Japan. He has left behind a large number of books. He died in 1927.

121 solar years ago, on this day in 1896 AD, Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity when he developed a photographic plate he left in a desk drawer with crystals of a uranium compound upon it. He found a fogged image of the uranium crystals resting on it, although the plate was wrapped in heavy black paper. He had left the objects together on 26th February, after postponing his intended experiment on phosphorescent emissions stimulated by the sun. Having being left in darkness, eventually he realized the crystals where not phosphorescing from sunlight. Instead he had found spontaneous and penetrating rays, independent of any input of energy. A glimpse of a new mystery of the atom had been revealed, investigated for years after by other scientists. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie for their work on radioactivity.

119 solar years ago, on this day in 1898 AD, Puerto Rico Island in the Caribbean Sea was seized by American forces during the 4-year war against Spain. The US annexed this Island to its territory and turned it into a huge arsenal with thirteen military bases.

100 lunar years ago, on this day in 1338 AH, the Iranian religious scholar and literary figure, Mirza Hassan Aqa Tabrizi, passed away. After preliminary studies in his hometown Tabriz, he left for holy Najaf in Iraq for higher studies. He attended the classes of prominent ulema, such as Ayatollah Sheikh Morteza Ansari Dezfuli, Seyyed Hussain Kouh-Kamarei, and Mullah Ali Nahavandi. After attaining the status of Ijtehad, he returned to Tabriz where he taught Islamic sciences for almost 40 years. He was a supporter of the Constitutional Movement, and later opposed the deviations that took place under the Constitutionalists.

94 solar years ago, on this day in 1923 AD, Iranian musician, Morteza Hannaneh, was born. For a while, he was conductor of Tehran’s Symphonic Orchestra, and then joined Iran Radio. An expert in classical Iranian music, he died at the age of 67 in 1990. He authored several books, including the translation and commentary of the book “Maqased al-Ilhaan”.

63 solar years ago, on this day in 1954 AD, the Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean by the US, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused, and total vaporization of one of the atolls that disappeared in the over 100-mile wide mushroom cloud. The huge explosion was equivalent to 1,000 atomic bombs of the kind the US dropped on Hiroshima. Radioactivity made the bomb site islands an unsafe wasteland for many decades to follow. The US is the world’s most dangerously armed nuclear power with a criminal record of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in the closing days of World War 2, as a live field test, and is the chief culprit in release of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

57 solar years ago, on this day in 1960, a major earthquake jolted the port city of Agadir in western Morocco on the Atlantic coast, resulting in the death of at least 12,000 people. It lasted for only 15 seconds, was followed by a Tsunami and was the most destructive earthquake in North Africa.

38 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, Iraqi Kurdish politician, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, while undergoing lung cancer treatment at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. died at the age of 76. His body was flown to Iran from the US and buried in Oshnavieh in Kurdistan Province, where his family was living in exile because of persecution by Iraq’s repressive Ba’th minority regime. In October 1993, Barzani's remains were taken across the border from Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan, to be reburied in his hometown of Barzan. In 1946, he had been chosen as leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). His son, Massoud Barzani, is the current leader of the KDP and was re-elected as the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

29 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, during the waning months of the US imposed 8-year war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad ordered the indiscriminate firing of at least 16 long range missile into Tehran’s residential areas, that left houses and commercial areas devastated, in addition to the martyrdom and injury of several men, women, and children. The missile barrage into Tehran and other Iranian cities continued for the next few days, without the UN and the self-styled defenders of human rights in the west uttering even a single word in condemnation, until the Iranians quickly developed the technology to shoot down the incoming Iraqi missiles in midair, thus averting a potential catastrophe.

25 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina began casting ballots in an independence referendum; Serbs boycotted the vote, and started military activities and finally genocide of the Muslims in a bid to stall independence.

AS/ME