Today is Wednesday; 11th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1437 lunar hijri; and March 30, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2255 solar years ago, on this day in 239 BC, the first recorded perihelion passage of what later became known as Halley's Comet, was carried out by Chinese astronomers in the Shih Chi and Wen Hsien Thung Khao chronicles. It was the first comet that was recognized as being periodic. Its highly elliptical, 75-year orbit, carries it out well beyond the orbit of Neptune and well inside the orbits of Earth and Venus when it swings in around the Sun, travelling in the opposite direction from the revolution of the planets. In Babylonian and later in Islamic scientific chronicles, references exist about this comet, which in 1705 was first noted in Europe by Englishman, Edmond Halley, after whom the West named it posthumously.

1445 lunar years ago, on this day, some nine years before Hijra, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) was blessed with the radiant daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA), who is referred by God Almighty in the holy Qur’an as “Kowsar” or the Perennial Fountain of Abundant Munificence. The birth of this noblest-ever lady, after the Prophet’s sons had died in infancy, ensured the continuation of the blessed progeny of the Almighty’s Last Messenger to mankind. She was the perfect daughter, the perfect wife for the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS) and the perfect mother for sons Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS), and daughters Hazrat Zainab (SA) and Hazrat Omm Kolsoum (SA). There are several ayahs in the holy Qur’an referring to the unsurpassed merits of the Pride of the Virgin Mary, including the Verse of Purity, and the Verse of Mobahela, on whose revelation, she accompanied her father, husband and two small sons to the historical debate with the Christians of Najran that made the truth of Islam triumph. Her birth anniversary is marked as Mother’s Day and the start of the Women’s Week in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the years Muslims in several other countries have begun to hold such gatherings in order to more clearly tread the path of Fatema (SA), the daughter at whose threshold the Prophet used to salute and stand to his feet whenever she entered his presence, so as to give a practical demonstration of the rights and dignity of women in Islam.

584 solar years ago, on this day in 1432 AD, Sultan Mohammad II, the Ottoman Emperor, who conquered Constantinople and ended Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire, was born in Edirne, then the capital city of the Ottoman Turks. His father was Sultan Murad II. In 1453 at the age of 21 – two years after becoming Sultan – he conquered Constantinople, which was renamed Islambol (modern Istanbul). It is said that when he entered the Byzantine capital and stepped into the ruins of the Boukoleon, known to the Ottomans and Iranians as the Palace of the Caesars, which was built over a thousand years before by Theodosius II, he recited the Persian couplet of the famous Iranian poet, Sheikh Mosleh od-Din Sa’di:

“The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars;

The owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiyab.”

Sultan Mohammad, who reigned for 30 years, did not persecute the Christians and even allowed the Greek Orthodox Church to maintain its headquarters in Constantinople. On 1 June 1453, just three days after the fall of the city, the procession of the new Patriarch, Gennadius, passed through the streets where the Sultan received the Head of the Christian Church graciously and himself invested him with the signs of his office. This ceremonial investiture would be repeated by all Sultans and Patriarchs thereafter until the end of Ottoman rule in 1923. The Ottomans divided their Empire into millets or subject nations, of which the Greek Christians were the largest, known as Millet-e Roum. Sadly, when Greeks, revolted against Ottoman rule with the support of Britain, France and Russia, during the 1820s-30s, they launched a general massacre of Muslims in what is now Greece, destroyed centuries of Islamic culture, and converted mosques into churches.

457 solar years ago, on this day in 1559 AD, German mathematician, Adam Riese, died at the age of 67. He is considered in the West as the "father of modern calculating" for his recognition that Roman numerals are unwieldy in practice and their replacement by the considerably more structured Arabic numerals. In his book “Rechnung auff der Linihen und Federn” (written in 1522 and published 114 times till this day), besides calculating on the calculating board, he describes numerical calculations with Arabic digits. Over five centuries earlier, Gerbert d'Aurillac of France, who later became Pope Sylvester II, had introduced to Europe for the first time the Arabic numerals of the famous Iranian Islamic scientist, Mohammad ibn Musa Khwarezmi. Inspired by Latin translations of Islamic scientific works, he had extensively utilized Islamic scientific works to build for the first time in Europe clocks, the hydraulic organ, astronomical instruments, and the abacus for use in mathematical calculations. Christian Europe came out of the Dark Ages, thanks to his study of Islamic sciences.

196 solar years ago, on this day in 1820 AD, British author, Anna Sewell, was born in Yarmouth. She is best known as the author of the classic novel “Black Beauty” which is a story about a horse, and has been made into a children’s movie.

163 solar years ago, on this day in 1853 AD, famous Post-Impressionist Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, was born in Zundert. His works had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. His output includes portraits, self portraits, landscapes and still life. He produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints, during his short life of 37, which ended in a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Although he failed to sell any of his paintings, today his works are priced in millions of dollars.

160 solar years ago, on this day in 1856 AD, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the 3-year long Crimean War, between expansionist Russia, on one side, and France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austria, and Prussia, on the other side. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. Most of the battles took place on the Crimean Peninsula, but there were smaller campaigns in western Anatolia and the Caucasus.

149 solar years ago, on this day in 1867 AD, Russia sold the rich land of Alaska, situated northeast of Canada and on the coastlines of Pacific Ocean and near the Arctic circle, to the US for a paltry $7.2 million, due to its financial needs. Alaska covers an area of over 1.5 million sq km. It is now the 49th US state and is rich in natural resources, especially oil and gold, in addition to fishing. The deal was conducted by US Secretary of State, William Seward for about 2 cent per acre, and was long derided by Americans as Seward’s Folly for Alaska’s remoteness.

117 lunar years ago, on this day in 1320 AH, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA) was born in the city of Khomein, on the auspicious birth anniversary of his blessed ancestress, Prophet Mohammad’s (SAWA) daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA). From childhood he was immersed in the study of Islamic sciences, and at the same time was aware and conscious of the political developments around in those days of Iran’s subservience to the British and the Russians. When he entered manhood, and was already a scholar of repute in hadith, philosophy and other subjects, he saw the British replace the Qajarid dynasty with an illiterate soldier named Reza Khan, who assumed the surname Pahlavi and unleashed oppression on the people and the ulema through his anti-Islamic policies. Reza Khan forcibly unveiled Iranian women, and banned men from wearing the traditional Iranian dress by imposing upon them European style of clothing. In 1941, Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini saw the British replace Reza Khan with his son, Mohammad Reza on the Peacock Throne, and this new self-styled king was even more submissive to his masters. In the early 1950s, the oil nationalization movement took shape and the Shah fled but was restored to power in the August 1953 CIA coup by the Americans, his new masters. In 1963, the Imam openly spoke against the anti-Islamic policies of the corrupt Pahlavi regime, for which he was imprisoned and then exiled – initially to Turkey and thereafter to Iraq, where he spent 14 years in holy Najaf, beside the shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), grooming a large number of scholars. His guidelines generated the Islamic Revolution, and in February 1979, after a brief three-month stay in Paris, he returned to Iran to found the Islamic Republic. He thus delivered the country, not just from domestic despotism but foreign hegemony. It was his astute guidance that saved Islamic Iran from the intricate plots of the Great Satan (the US) including the 8-year war imposed by the American stooge Saddam. Imam Khomeini, who led the worldwide Islamic revival, was a prominent Mujtahid and a Gnostic of the highest order, who wrote several books. His concept of “Wilayat-e Faqih” or Governance of the Supreme Jurist in the absence of the Infallible Imam is indeed unique and the key to the steadfastness and success of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the face of heavy odds. His speeches and messages are gathered in the 21-volume book “Sahifa-e Noor” or the Scripture of Light. He has also left behind a diwan of Persian poetry.

91 solar years ago, on this day in 1925 AD, Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist, died. He gained initial recognition at the end of the 19th century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including “The Philosophy of Freedom”. He founded a spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view.

40 solar years ago, on this day in 1976 AD, the major demonstrations of Land Day started in the Zionist usurped land of Palestine. In response to Israel’s announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of acres of Muslim land for so-called "security and settlement purposes", a general strike and marches were organized in Arab towns from the Galilee to the Naqab Desert. In the ensuing confrontations, the Zionist army killed six Palestinians, injured over a hundred others, and arrested several hundreds. Every year on this day, the people of Palestine and other Muslim countries hold rallies denouncing the expansionist policies of the illegal Zionist entity.

9 solar years ago, on this day in 2008 AD, the Earth Hour worldwide movement for the planet, organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), went international, in a global effort to raise awareness about climate change that will even be monitored from space – a year after it was started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia. The event is held worldwide annually encouraging individuals, communities, households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on the last Saturday in March, as a symbol for their commitment to the planet. Earth Hour 2015 was on Saturday, March 28, from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, with more than 7000 cities and towns worldwide, observing it. In Iran, lights were switched off during the prescribed hour at Tehran’s Milad Tower, and at Isfahan’s Siosepol (33-span) Bridge and the Naqsh-e Jahan Square.

AS/AS/ME