Today is Tuesday; 30th of the Iranian month of Aban 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 2nd of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1439 lunar hijri; and November 21, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

809 lunar years ago, on this day in 630 AH, the historian, compiler of hadith, and literary figure, Abu’l-Hassan Ali ibn Mohammad, better known as Izz od-Din Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari, passed away in Mosul, Iraq at the age of 75. Born in a Kurdish family in Jazirat Ibn Umar in Iraq, which was then part of the Great Seljuq Empire with its capital in Isfahan, he spent his scholarly life in Mosul, often visiting Baghdad, where he learned from the Iranian scholar Khateeb-e Tusi. With the disintegration of the Seljuqid Empire, he was with the army of the Kurdish adventurer Salah od-Din Ayyoubi in Syria, and has written eyewitness accounts of the battles with the Crusader invaders from Europe, who had usurped Palestine and illegally set up the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was about 28 years old when Bayt al-Moqaddas and Palestine were conquered after 88 years of Crusader occupation by the joint Islamic army of Kurds, Turks, Arabs and Iranians. His chief work is a general history of the world, titled "al-Kamel fi’t-Tarikh" (The Complete History), in which he has included reports of the destructive events taking place in the last years of his life in the Islamic east, particularly in Central Asia and Khorasan, where the barbaric Mongol onslaught was destroying centuries of flourishing civilized life. He has also written a specialized history of the Atabek Dynasty of Mosul titled "at-Tarikh al-Baher fi’l-Dowlat-al-Atabekiyah bi’l-Mawsil". His other famous work is "Usod al-Ghabah fi Ma‘rifat as-Sahabah", which is bibliography of the companions of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Izz od-Din should not be confused with his elder brother, Majd od-Din Ibn Athir, the author of "Jame' al-Usoul" – a compendium of the "Sihah as-Sitta" or the Six Authoritative Hadith Books of Sunni Muslims, compiled almost wholly by Iranian converts to Islam.

631 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.

341 solar years ago, on this day in 1676 AD, Danish astronomer Ole Christensen Romer, inventor of the modern thermometer showing the temperature between two fixed points, namely the points at which water respectively boils and freezes, claimed to have made the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light, although Islamic scientists had already made such discoveries several centuries earlier. It is interesting to note that Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), the 4^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), has even spoken of the weight of light in one of his supplications to God Almighty as is evident in the Sahifat-as-Sajjadiya, almost a millennium earlier than Romer. In 1021, the Islamic scientist Hassan Ibn al-Haytham –Alhazen to medieval Europe – in his famous “Kitab al-Manazer” (or Book of Optics) has presented a series of arguments dismissing the emission theory of vision of the Greek philosopher Aristotle in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This made Ibn al-Haytham, who flourished in the Shi’a Muslim dynasties of Buwaihid-ruled Iraq and Fatemid-ruled Egypt, propose that light must have a finite speed and that the speed of light is variable, decreasing in denser bodies. He argued that light is substantial matter, the propagation of which requires time, even if this is hidden from our senses. In the same period, the celebrated Iranian Islamic genius Abu Rayhan Birouni agreed that light has a finite speed, and observed that the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound.

323 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.

234 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.

226 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.

211 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.

179 lunar years ago, on this day in 1260 AH, the combatant scholar, Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Shafti passed away at the age of 85. Born in Gilan, northern Iran, he travelled to Iraq for higher studies at the famous Islamic seminary of holy Najaf. On his return to Iran, he stayed for a while in holy Qom and Kashan before settling in Isfahan, where he groomed students, wrote books, and was active in social affairs, especially helping the needy. This brought him into conflict with the tyrannical Qajarid regime. Among his works is “Tuhfat al-Abrar al-Mustanbitt”, and Commentary on Allamah Hilli’s “Tahzib al Osoul”.

171 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.

140 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 speaker’s 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.

96 solar years ago, on this day in 1921 AD, Iran as per the approval of the Majlis (parliament), secretly signed a contact with Standard Oil of the US for exploitation of its northern oilfields. Two days later, when the news leaked out, the Soviet Union, followed by Britain, delivered ultimatums to Iran to cancel the contact with the American company, but the Majlis ignored them.

55 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.

38 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, the scholar and poet, Mohammad Hussain Jalilli “Bidaar”, passed away at the age of 60 in his hometown Kermanshah. Son of Ayatollah Hadi Kermanshahi, after elementary school, he studied hadith, jurisprudence, philosophy and Arabic literature under his father and Allamah Haidar Qoli Sardar Kabuli. He then graduated from Tehran University and returned to Kermanshah to teach literature. An accomplished poet of the classical Persian style, he composed lively ghazals. He wrote several books, including “Ancient Kermanshah” and “History of Seljuq Dynasty” in Persian, and “Abkaar al-Afkaar” in Arabic.

32 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.

21 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.

21 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 issues that affect people. It is a 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.

5 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 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 occupation forces.

AS/ME