Today is Monday; 8th of the Iranian month of Dey 1399 solar hijri; corresponding to 13th of the Islamic month of Jamadi al-Awwal 1442 lunar hijri; and December 28, 2020, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1431 lunar years ago, on this day in 11 AH, based on a narration, Hazrat Fatemah Zahra (peace upon her), the venerable daughter of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and the noblest lady of all times, attained martyrdom, some 75 days after the passing away of her father. She is the model-par-excellence for all virtuous women, and is considered as the Pride of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Prophet Jesus (peace upon them). The cause of martyrdom was flinging of the burning door of her house upon her by a roguish group of her father’s companions, who had usurped the political right of leadership of her husband, Imam Ali (AS), had seized her patrimony (the orchard of Fadak), and were demanding that the Imam should take oath of allegiance to the new regime.
1370 lunar years ago, on this day in 72 AH, Mus’ab ibn Zubayr and Ibrahim ibn Malek Ashtar were killed in a battle near Balad in Iraq at a place called Miskan, by forces of Abdul-Malik bin Marwan, the 5th self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad regime, who subsequently took control of Iraq and the next year sent forces to attack Mecca and kill Abdullah ibn Zubayr the rival caliph, after desecrating the holy Ka’ba.
1127 solar years ago, on this day in 893 AD, a devastating earthquake destroyed the city of Dvin and most of its 70,000 people, in Armenia.
559 solar years ago, on this day in 1461 AD, Jam Nizam od-Din II, the most powerful ruler of the Samma Dynasty, succeeded his father Sanjar Sadr od-Din and ruled for 47 years over Sindh, parts of Punjab, Baluchestan and Gujarat. Towards the end of his reign he defeated a Mughal army sent against him by Shah Beg Arghun from Qandahar.
398 solar years ago, on this day in 1622 AD, the English East India Company’s ships defeated a Portuguese fleet of twenty-one sail under Admiral Ruy Frere, attacking them near Iran’s Jask Island in the Persian Gulf.
361 solar years ago, on this day in 1659 AD, Maratha rebel Shivaji, after feigning peace and treacherously murdering on November 10 the famous general of eastern Iranian origin, Afzal Khan, of the Persianate Adel-Shahi dynasty of Deccan (southern India), again resorted to deception to defeat near Kolhapur an army led by Rustam Zaman and Hindus opposed to his rule.
189 solar years ago, on this day in 1831 AD, Samuel Sharp, an enslaved black African youth led an uprising in Jamaica that was brutally crushed by the British at a great cost. The 8-day uprising led to the death of around 186 Africans. In revenge, the colonial authorities convicted over 750 black people and sentenced to death 138.
164 lunar years ago, on this day in 1278 AH, the acclaimed Muslim scholar and literary figure, Mirza Fazl Ali Iravani, popularly known as "Safa” was born in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz. He authored numerous books, including "Hada’eq al-Arefin”, and "Mesbah al-Hoda”.
161 solar years ago, on this day in 1859 AD, British historian and politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay, died at the age of 59. An expert of the English language, during his 4-year tenure in British-ruled India from 1834 to 1838, he made English compulsory and discouraged the use of Persian which for centuries had been the court and official language of the Subcontinent, besides being the strategic cultural and religious link of the Muslims of South Asia with Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. He was scornful of the wisdom of the east, including the rich Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit heritage of India. He made English the medium of education in order to create Anglicised Indians, detached from their native culture and serving the interests of their colonial masters.
135 solar years ago, on this day in 1885 AD, the Indian National Congress was founded by members of the occultist movement known as the Theosophical Society by Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naorozji, Dinshaw Wacha, Surendranath Banerjee, and William Wedderburn. It led the Indian Independence Movement against British rule. After independence in 1947, it became the dominant political party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part. Today its dominance has been eroded, and it is only able to form coalition governments with other parties.
126 solar years ago, on this day in 1895 AD, a motion picture was shown for the first paying audience Grand Café in Paris, marking the debut of the cinema. It was produced by the celebrated French inventors and founders of the film industry, the Lumiere Brothers – Auguste and Louis – who earlier in March the same year had screened at a private audience the first movie showing workers leaving the Lumières’ factory in Lyon.
113 solar years ago, on this day in 1906 AD, Iran’s first Constitution, drafted by the newly formed parliament, was signed by the Qajarid king, Mozaffar od-Din Shah. It initially contained 51 articles, and later 107 more articles were added to it. The constitution was tampered with and changed constantly, especially during the despotic rule of the British-installed and American-backed Pahlavi regime. Passages pertaining to people’s rule and the Islamic shari’ah were eliminated, while clauses were added to spread corruption and depravity in society for weakening the people’s cultural values in order to strengthen the repressive rule of the Pahlavis. Following the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that ended domestic despotism and foreign hegemony, the Iranian people voted for a popularly drafted constitution to replace the obsolete one.
112 solar years ago, on this day in 1908 AD, an earthquake of 7.2 degrees hit the city of Messina, in Sicily, killing over 75,000 people. The Italian mainland also suffered heavy damage, and the shocks were felt within a 300 km. Moments after the quake, a 12 m tsunami struck nearby coasts causing even more devastation. 91% of structures in Messina were destroyed.
52 solar years ago, on this day in 1968 AD, the illegal Zionist entity, in violation of international laws, attacked Beirut International Airport, destroying 13 civilian planes of several countries sitting on the tarmac. The pretext was an alleged attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens that was blamed on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but it was no justification to breach the sovereignty of an independent country and destroy the airliners of third countries.
11 solar years ago, on this day in 2009 AD, on Ashura, the 10th of Muharram, in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, some fifty mourners were martyred and hundreds of others injured while commemorating the tragedy of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS), the grandson of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), when Takfiri terrorists blew up through remote control in the midst of a procession of mourners an unsuspecting person to whom they had handed a suitcase full of explosives, along with money as bribe to carry it through the crowd. On the same day, in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a similar cowardly act of terrorism was carried out by the Takfiris at a procession of mourners, resulting in the martyrdom of a dozen people and wounding over a hundred others. The Takfiris are financed by Saudi Arabia and provided ammunitions by CIA and Zionist agents to tarnish the image of Islam through such dastardly acts.
7 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime of Bahrain, arrested prominent religious leader, Shaikh Ali Salman, the head of the main opposition bloc al-Wefaq, as part of the US-Saudi-Zionist plot to crush the Shi’a Muslim majority. Though released, in 2015 he was again illegally arrested and in a sham trial sentenced to a 9-year prison term on trumped up charges, despite the fact he and his followers advocate a peaceful non-violent struggle for materialization of their birthrights.