Today is Sunday; 11th of the Iranian month of Aban 1399 solar hijri; corresponding to 15th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1442 lunar hijri; and November 1, 2020, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1294 lunar years ago, on this day in 148 AH, the scholar Sulaiman Ibn Mehran Kufi al-A’mash passed away in Kufa. He had a sharp memory and had memorized a great number of hadith. A follower of the Infallible Imams of the Household of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), he was greatly respected by all other Muslims. He was said to be from Damavand, northeast of Tehran. Two days before his death he was visited by several scholars including Ibn Abu Layla and Abu Hanifa – the founder of the Hanafi School of jurisprudence. The discussion turned to hadith, and the famous statement of Imam Ali (AS): "I am the distributor of heaven and hell”. A’mash enlightened the assembly saying that Abu Mutawakkil Naji had told him on the authority of Abu Sa’eed Khudri, who heard the Prophet saying:
"On the Day of Judgement, God will make me and Ali sit on the Sirat with instructions to allow into heaven whoever acknowledged my mission and the friendship of Ali, and to cast into hell whoever denied my mission and was hostile to Ali.”
The Prophet then added: "None have true faith in God except those who acknowledge my mission, and none have really acknowledged my mission except the one who sincerely believed in Ali.”
This hadith has been narrated through various other sources as well.
1268 lunar years ago, on this day in 174 AH, Abdullah bin Lahiyya, the chief judge of Egypt passed away. He was considered a reliable narrator of hadith by most of the Sunni scholars, and among his narrations are many which expose Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan as a criminal and murderer of Muslims, including the companions of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) such as Hujr Ibn Adi, who was martyred near Damascus for being a staunch follower of Imam Ali (AS). Recently Hujr’s tomb was desecrated by Takfiri terrorists, who stole the body that had remained fresh despite passing a millennium and three centuries.
1119 lunar years ago, on this day in 323 AH, Obaidullah Mahdi died. He claimed to be a descendant of Ismail, the son of Imam Ja’far as-Sadeq (AS), the 6th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He rejected the Abbasids and all preceding caliphs as usurpers of the political rights of the Prophet’s divinely-appointed heir, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). He declared himself caliph in the Maghreb or North Africa, in what is now Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and founded the Fatemid Dynasty, which later shifted its capital to Egypt, ruling for a total of 274 years.
806 solar years ago, on this day in 1214 AD the important port city of Sinope on the northern-most edge of Anatolia on the Black Sea coast, surrendered to the Seljuq Turks led by Sultan Kaykavus, who defeated and captured King Alexios of Trebizond. It was a strategic victory that severed the link between the Christian kingdom of Trebizond and the Byzantine Empire, enabling the Muslims to complete the conquest of what is now Turkey.
354 solar years ago, on this day in 1666 AD, Sam Mirza was crowned as the 8th Emperor of the Safavid Dynasty of Iran, with the title Shah Safi II, after a 7-day mourning for his father, Shah Abbas II.
265 solar years ago, on this day in 1755 AD, a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami destroyed Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, killing almost ninety thousand people. Heavy damage resulted from ensuing fires and tsunami flooding across the Strait of Gibraltar in Morocco killing thousands of people.
148 lunar years ago, on this day in 1294 AH, the scholar Mohammad Qazvini was born in Tehran. Of the books he wrote "The Era of Hafez” is regarded as his masterpiece. At the age of 75 he passed away, and was laid to rest in Rayy, south of Tehran.
136 solar years ago, on this day in 1884 AD, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted at a meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, USA. Subsequently the International Date Line was drawn up and 24 time zones created. It is commonly used in practice to refer to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Greenwich Village, located on the 0 Latitude, lies some ten km east of London.
102 solar years ago, on this day in 1918 AD, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated following its defeat in World War I, resulting in the emergence of Austria and Hungary as two independent states in Central Europe. Austria and Hungary respectively cover almost 84,000 sq km and 93,000 sq km.
92 solar years ago, on this day in 1928 AD, President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, took another anti-Islamic step in order to sever links between Turkish Muslims and their rich culture, by passing a law for forced adoption of the Latin Alphabet to replace the traditional Arabicized Persian Alphabet of the Turkish language. He set the 1st of January 1929 as the deadline to switch to the new script or face penalties.
85 solar years ago, on this day in 1935 AD, Palestinian author and thinker, Edward Sa’eed, was born in a Christian family in the city of Bayt al-Moqaddas. He authored several books including "Culture and Imperialism”, "The Politics of Dispossession”, and "Covering Islam”. In his most important book "Orientalism”, he describes how Oriental scholars have turned into tools of Western colonialists to justify the looting of the wealth of Eastern nations by Western colonial states. He died in the US in 2003.
69 solar years ago, on this day in 1951 AD, during Operation Buster-Jangle in Nevada, the US regime deliberately exposed 6,500 American soldiers to ‘Desert Rock’ atomic explosions, as a live field test to determine radiation effects on humans, without informing them that they were being treated as laboratory animals.
68 solar years ago, on this day in 1952 AD, the first US test of a thermonuclear device, a hydrogen bomb dubbed "Mike,” was carried out at Eniwetok Atholl in the Pacific, 3,000 miles west of Hawaii.
66 solar years ago, on this day in 1954 AD, with the establishment of the Algerian Liberation Movement, the battle for independence from French colonial rule started.
57 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, the Pahlavi regime executed Tayyeb Haaj Rezaie. Born in 1901 in Tehran, he had supported the end of the corrupt Qajarid dynasty and the coming of the Pahlavis, but soon became disillusioned with this oppressive British-installed regime and its anti-Islamic policies. As a staunch devotee of the Chief of Martyrs, Imam Husain (AS), he was inspired by the personality of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA) and became one of the leading activists of the Khordad 15 (June 5) Uprising. He and his brother, Ismail, were arrested by the regime, physically tortured in prison, given death sentence by the kangaroo court, and thus achieved martyrdom.  
14 solar years ago, on this day in 2006 AD, Iran awarded the top prize in an international cartoon contest on the alleged holocaust in Europe during World War 2, to a Moroccan artist for his depiction of the illegal Zionist entity’s apartheid wall in the West Bank of River Jordan with a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp on it. It suggests that the Israeli repression of Palestinians is worse than Nazi Germany’s supposed suppression of Jews.
7 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, Iran launched its first submarine for tourists in the Persian Gulf waters – an all-Iranian-made undersea vehicle. The submarine, dubbed "Morvarid” (Pearl in Persian), serves tourists in Kish Island.