Today is Saturday; 4th of the Iranian month of Ordibehesht 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 15th of the Islamic month of Rajab 1437 lunar hijri; and April 23, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2494 solar years ago, on this day in 478 BC, the Delian League was founded by Greek city-states, numbering between 150 to 173 under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the mighty Persian Empire after the freak victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece by the Iranian Achaemenid Emperor Xerxes, who due to resistance, decided to withdraw after conquering almost all of Greece and destroying Athens. The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC. Shortly after its inception, Athens began to use the League's navy for its own purposes. This behaviour frequently led to conflict between Athens and the less powerful members of the League. By 431 BC, Athens' heavy-handed control of the Delian League prompted the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; the League was dissolved upon the war's conclusion in 404 BC. 

1713 solar years ago, on this day in 303 AD, the devoted Palestinian monotheist, Jirjis, known to the West by his Latinized name, Saint George, attained martyrdom at the hands of the Roman Emperor Diocletian for refusing to worship the idols of the Roman pantheon. He was noted for his bravery, and regarded Jesus as a Prophet of God, refusing to believe in the perverted concept of trinity forged by Paul the Jew, the founder of Christianity. Jirjis or St. George, was also a firm believer in the coming of the last and greatest of divine messengers, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), and has nothing to do with myths spun around him by the medieval Europeans.

1444 lunar years ago, on this day, 7 years before his migration from Mecca to Medina, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) instructed a group of early Muslims, suffering from the persecution of pagan Arabs, to migrate to Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), across the Red Sea, where the ruler, King Negus (Najashi) was a justice-loving monotheist. The 15-member group made up of 11 men and 4 women was led by the Prophet’s trustworthy companion Othman bin Madh’oun. A year later, the second migration of Muslims to Abyssinia took place when the Prophet instructed his paternal cousin, Ja’far ibn Abi Taleb (AS) to lead a group of some 88 persons. The pagan Arabs, alarmed at the hospitality accorded to the Muslims in Abyssinia, and resenting the spread of Islam, sent a delegation to King Negus, led by the notorious disbeliever, Amr ibn Aas, to extradite the believers. It is a well known fact of history, how Hazrat Ja’far (later at-Tayyar) refuted the accusations of the pagan Arabs in the Abyssinian court and by providing proof from the holy Qur’an of the prime position in Islam of Prophet Jesus (AS) and his virgin-mother, Mary (SA), convinced King Negus of the righteousness of Prophet Mohammad’s (SAWA) universal mission. Hazrat Ja’far (AS) returned to Arabia for good thirteen years later in 7 AH, incidentally on the day the impregnable Jewish fortress of Khayber was single-handedly conquered by his younger brother, the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS). He attained martyrdom a year later in the Battle of Mu’ta against a joint force of the Byzantine Empire and its Christian Arab allies, the Ghassanids, in what is now Jordan. His elder son, Abdullah was married to Imam Ali’s (AS) elder daughter, the Prophet’s granddaughter, Hazrat Zainab (SA).

1435 lunar years ago, on this day in 2 AH, upon God’s command, the “qibla” or focal point of worship for Muslims changed from the direction of Bayt al-Moqaddqas in Palestine to the holy Ka'ba in Mecca. The change of direction happened when Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) was leading the prayers in Medina in the mosque known till this day as “Zu-Qiblatayn” or Mosque of the Two Qiblahs.

1374 lunar years ago, on this day in 63 AH, Hazrat Zainab (SA), the venerable granddaughter of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), was martyred in a garden outside Damascus by an enemy of the Ahl al-Bayt who struck a fatal blow on her head with a pickaxe. The Heroine of Karbala who bequeathed to posterity the life-inspiring mourning ceremonies of Moharram and Safar for her brother, Imam Husain (AS), needs no introduction. We offer condolences to all listeners, and later in our programme, we will present you a special feature on her life and times.

1161 lunar years ago, on this day in 276 AH, the Iranian philologist of Arabic, Abu Mohammad Abdullah bin Muslim ibn Qutaybah ad-Dinawari, passed away in Baghdad. He was born in Kufa in Iraq, while his father was from the Khorasani city of Merv in what is now Turkmenistan. Having studied hadith and philology he became qazi or judge in Dinawar, near Hamedan in western Iran, and afterwards a teacher in Baghdad. He was the first representative of the eclectic school of Baghdad philologists that succeeded the schools of Kufa and Basra. He is regarded by Sunni Muslims as an authority on hadith. Among his works are "Gharib al-Qur'an" on its lexical issues, "al-Imama wa al-Siyasa" in which he has exposed the deviation of the caliphate from its goals, and "ash-She'r wa'sh-Shu'ara" on poetry and poets.

725 lunar years ago, on this day in 712 AH, the Iranian mystic and poet, Najm od-Din Zarkoub Tabrizi, passed away. He is the author in Persian of the “Futuwwat-Namah”, on the rites of “Jawan-mardi” or chivalry into which Sufis are initiated for serving the cause of God and humanity.

400 solar years ago, on this day in the year 1564 AD, the English poet, playwright, and author, William Shakespeare, died. He started his activities by acting and catapulted to fame in acting, and writing plays. He adopted the classical style and his works are mainly a blend of tragedies and comedies. His most important works include Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, although there are so many theories that the village-born Shakespeare was actually used a front man by certain aristocratic academicians for publication of their views and works, since political risks prevented them from disclosing their names. He died at the age of 52.

166 solar years ago, on this day in 1850 AD, English poet, William Wordsworth, died at the age of 80. He was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death seven years later.

158 solar years ago, on this day in 1858 AD, the physicist, mathematician, and presenter of Quantum Theory in Physics, Max Planck, was born in Germany. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, and was one of the staunch opponents of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler. He conducted extensive and valuable studies about thermodynamics, theoretical physics, heat, radiation and light and has left behind books in these domains. Planck's Quantum Theory revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity revolutionized the understanding of space and time. He died in 1947.

120 lunar years ago, on this day in 119 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasim Musavi Khoei, was born in Khoy in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province. After initial studies in Tabriz, he left for holy Najaf in Iraq at the age of 13 to continue his studies. Here, his piety and knowledge attracted the attention of the India-based Iranian religious scholar, Mirza Ahmad Najafi-Tabrizi, who gave his daughter in marriage to him and lodged him in his own house. Mirza Ahmad used to frequent the semi-independent state of Banganapalle in south India, ruled by a Seyyed family of Iranian origin, who were patrons of scholars and learning. Soon Ayatollah Khoei mastered logic, rhetoric, theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, and in the process attained the status of Ijtehad. In 1971, he succeeded Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakim as the leading Marja’ of the Islamic world and thereafter groomed a large number of scholars from Iran, Iraq, the Subcontinent, Bahrain and Lebanon. Among his valuable books are “Lectures in the Principles of Jurisprudence”, in 10 volumes, “Islamic Law” in 18 volumes, and "Mu'jam Rijal al-Hadith" in 24 volumes. The last named is an authoritative work on evaluation of narrators of hadith. During the 8-year war imposed on Iran in the 1980s by the US through Saddam, he refused to yield to the Ba’thist minority regime’s pressures to denounce the Islamic Republic, even though his house was frequently subjected to water and electricity cuts. He passed away in Kufa at the age of 96, a year and some five months after Saddam brutally crushed popular uprising of the Iraqi people. It is believed the regime martyred him through poisoning.

90 solar years ago, on this day in 1926 AD, the Head of the Persian Cossack (Kazakh) officers in Iran, Reza Khan, was ordered by his British masters to crown himself as Shah and he chose the surname "Pahlavi", a year after toppling the Qajar king, Ahmad Shah. In 1941, this illiterate soldier was replaced by the British by his son, Mohammad Reza, and deported to Mauritius and then to Durban, South Africa, where he died. He was often called the “New Yazid” by the Iranians for his anti-religious policies, including the forced unveiling of Muslim women. The Pahlavis, who were agents of imperialism, were thrown into the dustbin of history with the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, under the leadership of Imam Khomeini (God bless him).

76 solar years ago, on this day in 1940 AD, the Radio Department was established for the first time in Iran and Radio Tehran started airing domestic news and reports on the country’s internal affairs. It was set up under supervision of the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone. Five years later radio stations were set up in other major Iranian cities, to keep the public informed of local, national and international events. Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the radio network was widely expanded and became nationwide. Today a wide variety of programs are aired round-the-clock for Iranians, in addition to broadcasts in 32 foreign languages for the region and the world under auspices of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

22 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, Eritreans voted overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum. The capital is Asmara. Eritrea is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeast and east of the country has an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea. Its size is approximately 117,600 km with an estimated population of 6 million, of whom more than 60 percent are Muslims. It was occupied by the British in the 19th century and then by the Italians, after whose defeat in World War 2, it was seized by Ethiopia. The people are Semitic and of the many languages spoken in Eritrea today, Tigrinya and Arabic are the two predominant languages for official purposes. English and Italian are also widely understood.

21 solar years ago, on this day in 1995 AD, the World Book and Copyright Day was initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The 23rd of April is the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and several other prominent authors.