This Day in History

Date: 29 June 2020 - 22:00

News ID: ۸۰۰۶۹

(June 30)

Today is Tuesday; 10th of the Iranian month of Tir 1399 solar hijri; corresponding to 8th of the Islamic month of Zilqa’dah 1441 lunar hijri; and June 30, 2020, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1062 lunar years ago, on this day in 379 AH, the Iranian Islamic astronomer, mathematician, and historian of science, Abu Hamed Ahmad Ibn Mohammed as-Saghani al-Asturlabi, passed away in Baghdad. He wrote some of the earliest comments on the history of science. These included comparison between the "ancients” that is, the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Indians, and the "modern scholars”, that is, the Muslim scientists of his time.
1056 lunar years ago, on this day in 385 AH, the Shafei hadith scholar Ali Ibn Omar Dar Qutni, passed away in his hometown Baghdad. Among his works, mention can be made of the book known as "Sunan Dar Qutni”, in which he has collected the hadith through different sources, and has mentioned some of the merits of the Infallible Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).
726 solar years ago, on this day in 1294 AD, following the murder of a Christian boy in Bern, several Jews were executed and the survivors expelled from Switzerland. In the 1620s Jews were banished from Swiss towns, and from 1776, they were allowed to reside only in the two villages of Lengnau and Oberendingen, in what is now the canton of Aargau.
753 lunar years ago, on this day in 688 AH, Iranian philosopher, Sufi writer, and Persian poet, Fakhr od-Din Ibrahim bin Bozorgmehr Iraqi, passed away in Damascus at the age of 80, and was laid to rest beside the tomb of the famous Spanish Muslim Gnostic, Sheikh Mohy od-Din ibn al-Arabi. His writings include "Lama’at” (Divine Flashes). His Diwan has been published in Iran under the title of "Kulliyaat-e Iraqi”. Another of his works is "Ushshaq-Namah” written during his stay in Multan and dedicated to the vizier Shams od-Din Juwayni.
678 solar years ago, on this date in 1342 AD, Zafar Khan, the founder of the Muzaffarid Dynasty of Gujarat, was born in Delhi to Wajih ul-Mulk, who before embracing Islam was a Rajput of the Tanka clan by the name of Sadharan.
441 solar years ago, on this day 1579 AD, the prominent Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Mohammad Pasha Sokolovich, was assassinated at the age of 73. He had taken part in wars against Safavid Iran as head of a force of Serbs and Greeks, but later, due to Shah Tahmasp’s diplomacy and proposal of a lasting peace accord, he advised the Ottoman Sultan to accept it. He was a great builder and constructed many mosques, schools, musafer-khanas (inns) and bridges in Istanbul, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Mecca.
112 solar years ago, on this day in 1908 AD, a massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Central Siberia in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The explosion (epicentre 60.886°N, 101.894°E), is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5-to-10 km above the Earth’s surface. It is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history.
103 solar years ago, on this day in 1917 AD, Zoroastrian intellectual, Dadabhai Naorozji, known as Grand Old Man of India, died at the age of 91 in his hometown Bombay (Mumbai). Books written by him include: "The Manners and Customs of the Parsees (Zoroastrians)” and "The European and Asiatic races”.
100 solar years ago, on this day in 1920 AD, the Iraqi people, led by Ayatollah Mirza Mohammad Taqi Shirazi, rose against the British occupiers. The British after initial defeats resorted to treachery by martyring Ayatollah Shirazi through poisoning and exiling Shaikh Mohammad Hussain Kashef al-Gheta to Iran. They then deprived the Shia Muslim majority of Iraq of representative rule, by installing in Baghdad an imported king – Faisal, the son of the British agent, Sharif Hussain of Hejaz.
90 solar years ago, on this day in 1930 AD, the prominent poet and religious scholar, Seyyed Ahmad Peshawari, known as "Adib Peshawari”, passed away in Tehran at the age of 86. Although Adīb belonged to the older generation of poets, he espoused, like some of his younger contemporaries, new social and political ideas. Thus he helped pioneer patriotic trends in Persian verse. His importance is that of a forerunner, whose early poems indicate tendencies which gained prominence during the constitutional period. He also wrote a "marthiya” (elegy) in Arabic on the martyrdom of Ayatollah Sheikh Fazlollah Noori.
88 lunar years ago, on this day in 1353 AH, the prominent jurisprudent Mullah Mohammad Hussain Fesharaki, passed away in his hometown Isfahan at the age of 87.
86 solar years ago, on this day in 1934 AD, the Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler’s violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, took place. Also called Operation Hummingbird, the 3-day bloody purge resulted in a series of political murders, including Hitler’s one-time ally Ernst Roehm. Leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were murdered, as were prominent conservative anti-Nazis (such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923).
74 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, the US, within a year of its state terrorism of dropping atomic bombs on the unsuspecting Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a field test to gauge how many million people would be annihilated, and the effects of deadly radiation on land and water resources, criminally dropped an atomic bomb from an airplane over the Bikini Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean onto a target group of 73 ships moved there for the purpose. Named "Able,” the explosion caused a 520-foot burst. The Gilliam and Carlisle transport ships were sunk, and 18 other ships were damaged, in addition to the radiation that wiped out marine life in the region. The US is the world’s most dangerously armed nuclear power.
60 solar years ago, on this day in 1960 AD, the Democratic Republic of Congo declared independence from Belgium, with Joseph Kasavubu, and Patrice Lumumba, elected as president and premier respectively. In 1965, US agent, General Mobutu Sese Seko seized power through a coup, and started to brutally suppress the people. In 1970, he renamed the country as Zaire and declared himself president for life. In 1997 following his ouster, the country reverted to its original name of Democratic Republic of Congo. It covers an area of 2.3 million sq km, and shares borders with Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Central Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda.
50 lunar years ago, on this day in 1391 AH, Ayatollah Mirza Ahmad Najafi Khorasani Kifayi, passed away in holy Mashhad at the age of 91 and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS) beside the grave of his elder brother Mirza Mahdi Ayatollahzadeh. He held in high esteem the young and aspiring Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (God bless him), hailing him during the 1963 Khordad 15 Uprising against the Pahlavi potentate, as "Iran’s Prime Personality” – a prediction that came true a decade and a half later.
45 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, Ayatollah Seyyed Hassan Musavi Bojnourdi, passed away in holy Najaf, Iraq at the age of 80. As a leading teacher of the Najaf Seminary he was devised a new method for Ijtihad courses, and wrote the book "al-Qawa’ed al-Fiqhiyya” on it. He was in contact with Islamic centres around the world, including Egypt’s al-Azhar Academy.
31 solar years ago, on this day in 1989 AD, General Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir toppled the elected government of Sadeq al-Mahdi in Sudan, through a coup, and by enticing Islamist leader, Hassan at-Turabi, formed the Sudan National Congress Party to install himself as executive head of the new government. On 11 April 2019, Bashir was ousted in a military coup d’état. He was convicted of corruption in December 2019 and sentenced to two years in a prison for the elderly.
29 solar years ago, on this day in 1991 AD, the curtain came down on the apartheid regime of South Africa, with the collapse of white minority rule that since 1948 had brutally discriminated against the black majority.
21 lunar years ago, on this day in 1420 AH, Ayatollah Mirza Rahim Samet passed away at the age of 99 in his hometown Qazvin. He groomed a large number of students and wrote several books.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)