Today is Tuesday; 27th of the Iranian month of Bahman 1394 solar hijri; corresponding to 7th of the Islamic month of Jamadi al-Awwal 1437 lunar hijri; and February 16, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1900 solar years ago, on this day in 116 AD, Roman Emperor Trajan, following his surprise attack on the Iranian province of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) that saw Roman armies reach for the first time the shores of the Persian Gulf in what is now Kuwait, was so elated by this unexpected success that he prematurely sent a laureatae to the Senate in Rome, boosting of what he called the conquest of the Parthian Empire. However, as he left the Persian Gulf for Babylon, the Iranians led by Sanatrukes, the nephew of their Emperor, Osroes I, imperiled Roman positions in both Mesopotamia and Armenia, forcing Trajan to withdraw his troops that had penetrated Khuzestan. Although Sanatrukes was killed in the battle that the Iranians lost at Seleucia and their capital Ctesiphon (Mada’en near modern Baghdad) was temporarily occupied by the Romans, Trajan’s deteriorating health started to fail him. Following the heat stroke he suffered during the unsuccessful Roman attempt to capture the fortress city of Hatra on the Tigris near Mosul in what was then the Iranian province of Khavaran, and coupled with the renewed uprising of the people of Mesopotamia, Trajan was forced to retreat. His claim of being the conqueror of Parthian Empire turned out to be hollow. Early in 117, his health worsened and he died in Selinus in Cilicia in what is now the southeastern coastal region of Turkey on 9 August.
767 solar years ago, on this day in 1249 AD, Christian priest, Andrew of Longjumeau, was dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to Karakoroum, Mongolia, to meet with the Khaqan of the Mongol Empire, Guyuk Khan, to discuss an alliance with the Buddhists for attacking the Muslim world from the east and the west. Earlier, Andrew had carried letters from Pope Innocent IV to the Mongol Emperor, for the same purpose, but both his missions ended in failure. This is evident of the deep animosity of European rulers towards Islam and Muslims.
737 solar years ago, on this day in 1279 AD, King Afonso III of Portugal, who was a bitter enemy of Portuguese Muslims and occupied the principality of al-Gharb (Algarve), died at the age of 69. He has earned lasting notoriety by ending over five centuries of flourishing Islamic rule in the southern and western parts of the Iberian Peninsula in what is now called Portugal, where the Christians followed a policy of expansionism and occupation.
712 solar years ago, on this day in 1304 AD, Jayaatu Khan, Emperor Wenzong of Yuan Mongol Empire was born in China as Tugh Temur. Apart from Emperor of China, he is regarded as the 12th Great Khan of the Mongol Empire or Mongols, although it was only nominal due to the division of the empire. He first ruled from 16 October 1328 to 3 April 1329 before abdicating in favour of his brother Khutughtu Khan Kusala, and again ruled from 8 September 1329 to 2 September 1332 after Khutughtu Khan Kusala’s death. He died at the age of 28. His most concrete effort to patronize learning was his founding of the Academy of the Pavilion of the Star of Literature, first established in the spring of 1329, and was designed to undertake "a number of tasks, including the collection, collation, and compilation of books; and the appraisal and classifications of the paintings and calligraphic works in the imperial collection. Of the 113 officials successively serving in the academy, there were many distinguished Chinese literati, and the best Mongolian and Muslim scholars of the time. Concentrating so many talents in one governmental organ to perform various literary, artistic, and educational activities was unprecedented not only in the Yuan dynasty but also in Chinese history.
625 solar years ago, on this day in 1391 AD, Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos died after a reign of 50 years, spending his last years as a vassal of the Ottoman Sultans, Murad I and Bayazid I, after an unsuccessful bid to make an alliance with Rome and the Catholic Church against the Muslims. He made a humiliating tour of several European lands, suffering detention in Venice and ridicule in other parts for resisting demands to give up the Greek Orthodox creed and accept the supremacy of Rome. In the end he realized that his survival and that of the Orthodox sect of Christianity lay in accepting the suzerainty of the Turks rather than acknowledge the schism of the Catholic sect.
318 solar years ago, on this day in 1698 AD, Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomer, also known as "the father of naval architecture”, was born. His work founded photometry, the measurement of light intensity. He was a child prodigy, a professor at age 15, following his father, Jean Bouguer, in hydrography - the study of bodies of water, both salt and fresh. He participated on the expedition to Peru (1735-44) to measure an arc of the meridian near the equator. In 1729, he invented a photometer to compare the intensity of two light sources illuminating separate halves of translucent paper. The eye itself, he determined, could not be used as a meter, but could establish the equality of brightness of adjacent surfaces. Bouguer’s law gives the attenuation of a beam of light by an optically homogeneous (transparent) medium.
256 solar years ago, on this day in 1760 AD, the British treacherously massacred 29 Amerindian chiefs of the Cherokee tribe at Fort Prince George in South Carolina in what is now the USA in violation of the peace treaty. A few years earlier, a Cherokee delegation had visited London for meeting with King George II and conclusion of a pact to prevent further encroachment on the native lands by the white settlers, especially in view of the Anglo-French rivalry for domination of North America. The flare up began when the British on mere suspicion that the Cherokees might side with the French, tried to enslave them, and when matters became tense, killed scores of them, scalping and mutilating their bodies. They later collected bounties for the scalps. This barbarism naturally enraged the Amerindians and a skirmish followed with the forces of Governor Littleton of South Carolina. To pacify the situation, 29 of the Cherokee chiefs surrendered to the British, who viewed them as hostages and when tensions arose, Littleton mercilessly massacred them in cold blood. The European occupiers (British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, and the Dutch as well as the US), have a bleak, black and blood history of conducting genocide of the natives in the Americas.
70 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, for the first time the right to veto was exercised by the Soviet Union at the UN against a proposal at the Security Council. This questionable right is limited to the five self-imposed permanent members of Security Council, namely: The US, Russia, Britain, France, and China. The US has used most frequently, especially to kill any resolution against the crimes of the illegal Zionist entity, Israel.
63 solar years ago, on this day in 1953 AD, the first man-made diamonds, the size of grains of sand, were produced in Sweden in a high pressure press by subjecting graphite to 83,000 atmospheres pressure and about 2000°C for an hour. The research, headed by Erik Lundblad, was funded by the Swedish electrical company ASEA. The idea was conceived by refrigerator inventor, Baltzar von Platen. ASEA decided not to publish the results to keep the experiment a commercial secret. Less than a year later, 16 Dec 1954, General Electric in the U.S. also produced man-made diamonds, which is recognised as the first process that was reproducible.
32 solar years ago, on this day in 1984 AD, Hojjat al-Islam Sheikh Ragheb Harb, the Friday Prayer Leader of Jibshit in Southern Lebanon and one of the founders of the Islamic Resistance Movement against the illegal Zionist entity, attained martyrdom at the hands of Israeli forces. Earlier he was detained by Israeli agents for calling the people of southern Lebanon to rise against the Zionist occupiers. After his release he continued his struggle against the occupation of southern Lebanon by the Zionist regime until his martyrdom. At the funeral procession of this combatant religious leader, clashes occurred between the youths of Jibshit and the Zionist forces, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of a number of Muslim people of Lebanon.
24 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Abbas Musawi, the Secretary-General of Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist movement, Hezbollah, attained martyrdom, along with his wife, child, and three companions, when aircraft of the usurper Zionist entity targeted his car in southern Lebanon, while he was returning from ceremonies marking the 1st anniversary of the martyrdom of prominent religious leader, Hojjat al-Islam   Sheikh Ragheb Harb. This cowardly act of Zionist state terrorism enraged Muslims worldwide, but the Western regimes, despite their claim to support human rights, not only did not condemn it, but tried to justify it. Hezbollah elected Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Hassan Nasrollah as its next Secretary-General, who continues to lead the people of Lebanon to victories against Israeli crimes.
3 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, a terrorist bomb blast at a market in Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan, left almost a hundred Muslims of the ethnic Hazara community martyred, while around 200 others were injured. The Hazara and other Shi’a Muslims as well as Sunni Muslims are frequently targeted through dastardly bomb blasts by terrorist outfits such as the Taleban, Sepah-e Sahaba, Laskhar-e Jhangavi, etc.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://english.irib.ir)