Today is Monday; 25th of the Iranian month of Esfand 1393 solar hijri; corresponding to 25th of the Islamic month of Jamadi al-Awwal 1436 lunar hijri; and March 16, 2015, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
2612 solar years ago, on this day in 597 BC, the Babylonian tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar II (Bokht an-Nasar) after capturing the holy city of Bayt al-Moqaddas, replaced the Israelite king, Jeconiah (Yaqunia) with his own uncle Zedekiah (Sadqiya), thereby bringing under direct rule of Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) the kingdom of Judah (Palestine), which until then was a tributary. Jeconiah was taken to Babylon as prisoner. Nine years later in 588 BC, when the evil Zedekiah, ignoring the advice of Prophet Jeremiah (Irmiyah), dared to side with Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt, the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar II descended with a mighty army and after an 18-month siege, captured Bayt al-Moqaddas, plundered it, and razed to the ground all edifices, including Solomon’s Mosque for the worship of the One and Only God. Zedekiah, along with his followers attempted to escape, but was captured, made to see his sons put to death, before his own eyes were pulled out, and carried fettered as a captive to Babylon, where he remained a prisoner until death. Nebuchadnezzar transported almost all the population of Palestine to Mesopotamia. It is worth noting that the recently executed Iraqi tyrant, Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority, used to regard himself as reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, who was weaned on sow’s milk.
1978 solar years ago, on this day in 37 AD, Roman Emperor Tiberius died at the age of 77 after a reign of 34 years in a paranoid state following the invasion of Syria by Iran’s Parthian Empire. The stepson and successor of Emperor Augustus Caesar, decades earlier he had been sent at the head of a large army to Armenia to try to wrest its control from Parthia, but failed to defeat the Iranians. A year of negotiations, he was able to reach a compromise whereby the Iranians agreed to preserve Armenia as a buffer zone between the two empires and returned the standards of the legions they had captured during the wars against Parthia of the Romans under Marcus Crassus (53 BC – at the Battle of Carrhae), Decidius Saxa (40 BC), and Marc Antony (36 BC).   
1372 lunar years ago, on this day in 64 AH, Mu’awiyyah II, the son and successor of the Godless Yazid, abdicated the caliphate, 40 days after the death of his tyrannical father, the perpetrator of the tragedy of Karbala. The young Mu’awiyyah, who unlike his blasphemous father and grandfather, was an upright person, went on the pulpit of the main mosque of Damascus, and with eyes full of tears, recounted the evil and sacrilegious deeds of his father, Yazid, in martyring Imam Husain (AS), in imprisoning the Prophet’s household; in desecrating the Prophet’s Mosque and Shrine in Medina following the massacre of Muslims at Harrah, and in profaning the sanctity of the holy Ka’ba. He also recounted the evil deeds of his grandfather Mu’awiyah ibn Sufyan, the accursed founder of the Omayyad dynasty, in revolting against the rule of justice of Imam Ali (AS), in seizing the caliphate from Imam Hasan (AS), and in shedding the blood of Muslims. When his kinsman, the mischievous Marwan ibn al-Hakam told him that since he does not want to rule, he should handover the choice of caliph to a council, he replied: I have not tasted the fruits of the caliphate, so why should I experience its bitterness (through such a decision). Soon after his abdication he died under mysterious circumstances, while the aging Marwan seized the caliphate by marrying Yazid’s wife.
825 solar years ago, on this day in 1190 AD, before embarking on the Crusades against Muslims in Palestine, the Christian knights of England launched a massacre of Jews in York. The terrified Jewish population fled to Clifford’s Tower, which was set fire by a Christian priest, and hundreds of Jews were burnt to death. At a time when Jews enjoyed all rights in Muslim lands, even becoming viziers, they were subjected to periodic massacres in Europe for their rejection of Prophet Jesus (AS) and their slandering of his mother, the Virgin Mary (SA).   
498 lunar years ago, on this day 938 AH the great Islamic scholar of what is now Lebanon, Shaikh Ali bin Abdul-Aali al-Maysi al-Ameli, passed away and was laid to rest in his homeland. Known as "Muhaqqiq” (Researcher) for his outstanding abilities, he was teacher to the famous scholar Shaikh Zayn od-Din al-Jubai – Shaheed Thani (2nd Martyr) – for his tragic martyrdom in Syria. Shaikh Ali al-Maysi’s son, Shaikh Lotfallah al-Maysi migrated to Safavid Iran and settled in holy Mashhad in Khorasan, where he became a famous scholar. During those days, because of persecution by the Ottoman Turks, many Shi’ite Arab scholars of Lebanon migrated to Iran.
226 solar years ago, on this day in 1789 AD, German physicist Georg Simon Ohm was born in Brandenburg. In 1825 he demonstrated through research and experiments on the electrochemical cell invented by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta that there are no "perfect” electrical conductors. The next year, he stated the famous law known in his honour as Ohm’s Law: "If the given temperature remains constant, the current flowing through certain conductors is proportional to the potential difference (voltage) across it.” or V=iR. He died at the age of 65.
174 solar years ago, on this day in 1841 AD, John Murray, Scottish naturalist who, as one of its founders, coined the name oceanography, was born. He studied ocean basins, deep-sea deposits, and coral-reef formation. As a marine scientist, he took part in the Challenger Expedition (1872-76), the first major oceanographic expedition of the world. He was first to observe the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the existence of marine trenches. He attempted with Buchan to construct from temperature and salinity observations a qualitative theory of water movement in the world’s oceans. With Alexander Agassiz, he put forward a modified hypothesis for coral reef development, arguing against Charles Darwin’s hypothesis and suggesting that subsidence was not always a controlling mechanism. He died in 1914, killed by a motor car.
170 solar years ago, on this day in 1845 AD, German mathematician and physicist, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, was born. He conducted extensive research on different rays and discovered X-ray in 1895. The unit of radiation of X-rays and Gama rays is named after him as Roentgen.
156 solar years ago, on this day in 1859 AD, the Russian inventor and scientist, Alexander Popov, was born. He conducted extensive studies to build a device that would be able to record and broadcast sound. Thus, in 1895, he succeeded in inventing the tape recorder.
108 solar years ago, on this day in 1907 AD, the famous Iranian poetess, Parvin E’tesami, was born in the northwestern city of Tabriz in an academic family. Her father, Yusuf E’tesam ol-Molk, was an acclaimed translator and author who frequented the company of prominent poets and literary figures, such as the Poet Laureate Malik osh-Sho’ara Mohammad Taqi Bahar, and the Lexicographer Allamah Ali Akbar Dehkhoda. She learned Iranian and Arabic literature from her father and showed her talents for writing poems as of childhood. On graduation from high school she started teaching in Tabriz. She accompanied her father on his journeys around Iran and abroad, gaining valuable experiences and reflecting them in her poetry. Her Divan includes odes, elegies, and other styles of poetry. A realistic poetess she maintained strong ethical and religious beliefs. Parvin E’tesami passed away at the young age of 35 years in 1941.
76 solar years ago, on this day in 1939 AD, on the eve of World War II, Czechoslovakia was occupied by German Nazi forces, following Adolf Hitler’s occupation of Austria.
75 solar years ago, on this day in 1940 AD, the Swedish author, Selma Lagerlof, died at the age of 82. She was the first woman who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909.
70 solar years ago, on this day in 1945 AD, ninety percent of Wurzburg in Germany was destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers, killing over 5,000 men, women, and children.
47 solar years ago, on this day in 1968 AD during the Vietnam War, US massacred over 500 men, women and children in the village of My Lai that shocked the civilized world.
27 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, Baghdad’s repressive B’ath minority regime bombarded the northeastern Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabche with internationally-banned chemical weapons, killing 5,000 men, women, and children, and maiming 10,000 others, at a time when Iraqi Kurdish combatants welcomed Iran’s Muslim combatants as liberators from Saddam’s tyrannical rule. Western regimes, such as the US, Germany, France and Britain, which had supplied Saddam with chemical weapons, remained silent in the face of these barbaric crimes.
3 solar years ago, on this day in 2012 AD, Aziz Abu Saber, Brazilian geologist and environmentalist, passed away in his hometown Sao Paulo. He was a most respected scientist, recipient of the highest awards of Brazilian science in geography, geology, ecology, archaeology.
One solar year ago, on this day in 2014 AD, the people of Crimea voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. In ancient times, Crimea was the home of the Iranian tribes of Cimmerians and Scythians, before being colonized by the Greeks, who were followed by the Romans, the Goths, the Huns, the Bulgars, the Khazars, the Byzantines, the Qipchak Turks, and the Muslim Mongols of the Golden Horde. The area became the site of overlapping interests between the medieval Slavic, Turkic and Greek spheres, and a centre of slave trade. Slavs were sold to Byzantium and other places in Anatolia in this period. In the 1230s, this status quo was swept away by the Mongols and in the 14th century Crimea was incorporated into the territory of the Golden Horde. The Crimean Muslim Khanate, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, succeeded the Golden Horde and lasted from 1449 to 1779, building a glorious Muslim civilization. In 1571, Crimean Tatars sacked Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin. Crimea was seized by Russia in 1783. From 1853 to 1856, it was the site of the main battles of the Crimean War – between the Russian Empire and an alliance of France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire. During the Russian Civil War, the Red Army defeated the White Army in Crimea and in 1921 made it part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (which in 1922 became part of the Soviet Union). In World War 2, it was occupied by Germany in July 1942. After its liberation in May 1944, it was downgraded to the Crimean Oblast, and Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, ordered the mass deportation of Crimean Muslim Tatars for alleged sympathies for the Nazi forces. A total of more than 230,000 people were deported, mostly to Uzbekistan, at the time about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula. In 1954, Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev made Crimea a territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. In 1991, on disintegration of the USSR, it became part of Ukraine as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In the wake of the crisis created in Ukraine by the West, the Crimean people held a referendum and decided to join Russia.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://english.irib.ir)