Fifty-two Americans were taken hostage in Iran on November 4, 1979. On October 12, 1979, President Carter announced a halt on Iranian oil imports and froze all assets of the government of Iran in the United States and under the control of U.S. banks, businesses and individuals outside the United States. 36 years on, and these sanctions are about to be lifted.
World War I hostilities end at 11.00 am on November 11, 1918. Armistice signed by the Allies and Germany comes into effect at 11.00 am, on November 11th, 1918, bringing an end to WWI, which was known at the time as the "war to end all wars."
November 10th, 1989: the day when the “edifice of fear” turned into “a place of joy”.
The Berlin Wall was something of a propaganda disaster for the Soviet bloc as it showed the communists to be tyrannical in the way they controlled the movement of their people and their willingness to shoot at people they considered to be traitors. The fall of the Berlin Wall began the evening of 9th November and continued the following days and weeks.
On this day in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
On this day in 1883 - US Supreme Court decides Native Americans can't be Americans. Under the constitution of the United States, the "Indian tribes, being within the territorial limits of the United States, were not, strictly speaking, foreign states"; but "they were alien nations, distinct political communities", with whom the United States dealt with through treaties and acts of Congress. The members of those tribes owed immediate allegiance to their several tribes, and were not part of the people of the United States. The exclusion of Native Americans from citizenship was eventually eliminated by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The meaning of Halloween comes from the phrase “All-Hallow Evening” or “All-Saints Evening”. It was a Cristian name imposed to every event that was held on these days. The original event, some say, was a gathering that happened long ago in the ancient Ireland. The name of this event was Samhaid, which comes from ancient Irish and means literally “end of the summer”. In this event, people would disguise and ask for food outside doors, acting as the spirits and fairies who, by the power of the day could come across to our world.
In fact, the event has a lot of crossover meanings. Romans take over Celtas, the empire falls, but new mixed “traditions” continue, and by the end of the day we don’t know exactly why we are doing this. But is tradition, and is fun. Although, one of the ancient meanings have been lost: the respect to the nature, and the fear for the Winter (cofwinteriscomingcof).
By contrast, we have Dia de Muertos, an event who has gained a lot of impact in the last few decades as a reaction to the mass imposing of Halloween in México. In this attempt, Halloween have been seen as a meaningless ludic event, in some cases, resembling a pagan tradition. And by some reason, “pagan” means worship to the devil, but not, really, pagan doesn’t mean that.
Actually, Halloween is not that different. The problem is that we simply do not question ourselves about what was his meaning. For a country so powerful, looks like it is a shame to admit that their traditions are the result of a melting pot. But it is not that bad, actually, it is a good point. It request to the people of that nation a better capacity to understand their past. The long journey of their beliefs and how now we can party disguised without fear, otherwise we should be gathering the cattle and storing the harvest.
The coronation takes place on His Majesty's 47th birthday.
Happy Birthday, #MohammadRezaPahlavi, Shah and Father of #Iran
Constitution, U.S. 44-gun frigate, nicknamed Old Ironsides. It is perhaps the most famous vessel in the history of the U.S. navy. Authorized by Congress in 1794, the ship was launched in 1797 and was commissioned and put to sea in 1798 in the undeclared naval war with the French. It participated in the Tripolitan War. In the War of 1812, serving as flagship for Isaac Hull, The Constitution won a battle with the British vessel Guerrière on Aug. 19, 1812, and under the command of William Bainbridge it defeated the Java on Dec. 29, 1812. Charles Stewart was commanding the Constitution when on Feb. 20, 1815, it overcame the Cyane and the Levant (though the Levant was later recaptured by the British). The Constitution was condemned (1830) as unseaworthy, but public sentiment, aroused by Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem "Old Ironsides," saved the ship from dismantling, and it was rebuilt in 1833. The ship was laid up at the Portsmouth navy yard in 1855 and was there used as a training ship. In 1877 it was rebuilt again, and the next year it crossed the Atlantic. In 1897 it was stored at the Boston navy yard, and in 1927–30, under authorization of Congress, it was restored by public subscription (1925–27). Another restoration was begun in 1992 and was completed in 1997. The Constitution is now maintained at the Boston navy yard.
“Genghis” wasn’t his real name.
The man who would become the “Great Khan” of the Mongols was born along the banks of the Onon River sometime around 1162 and originally named Temujin, which means “of iron” or “blacksmith.” He didn’t get the honorific name “Genghis Kahn” until 1206, when he was proclaimed leader of the Mongols at a tribal meeting known as a “kurultai.” While “Khan” is a traditional title meaning “leader” or “ruler,” historians are still unsure of the origins of “Genghis.” It may have may have meant “ocean” or “just,” but in context it is usually translated as “supreme ruler” or “universal ruler.”
He was tolerant of different religions.
Unlike many empire builders, Genghis Khan embraced the diversity of his newly conquered territories. He passed laws declaring religious freedom for all and even granted tax exemptions to places of worship. This tolerance had a political side—the Khan knew that happy subjects were less likely to rebel—but the Mongols also had an exceptionally liberal attitude towards religion. While Genghis and many others subscribed to a shamanistic belief system that revered the spirits of the sky, winds and mountains, the Steppe peoples were a diverse bunch that included Nestorian Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and other animistic traditions. The Great Khan also had a personal interest in spirituality. He was known to pray in his tent for multiple days before important campaigns, and he often met with different religious leaders to discuss the details of their faiths. In his old age, he even summoned the Taoist leader Qiu Chuji to his camp, and the pair supposedly had long conversations on immortality and philosophy.
He created one of the first international postal systems.
Along with the bow and the horse, the Mongols most potent weapon may have been their vast communication network. One of his earliest decrees as Khan involved the formation of a mounted courier service known as the “Yam.” This medieval express consisted of a well-organized series of post houses and way stations strung out across the whole of the Empire. By stopping to rest or take on a fresh mount every few miles, official riders could often travel as far as 200 miles a day. The system allowed goods and information to travel with unprecedented speed, but it also acted as the eyes and ears of the Khan. Thanks to the Yam, he could easily keep abreast of military and political developments and maintain contact with his extensive network of spies and scouts. The Yam also helped protect foreign dignitaries and merchants during their travels. In later years, the service was famously used by the likes of Marco Polo and John of Plano Carpini.
On Oct. 19, 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who died in 1997. The beatification of the Macedonia-born nun took place in Rome, and her popularity has remained strong in the months since.
The process leading up to the beatification has been the shortest in modern history. In early 1999—less than two years after Mother Teresa's death—Pope John Paul waived the normal five-year waiting period and allowed the immediate opening of her canonization cause.
In 2002, the Holy Father recognized the healing of an Indian woman as the miracle needed to beatify Mother Teresa of Calcutta. That healing occurred on the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. It involved a non-Christian woman in India who had a huge abdominal tumor and woke up to find the tumor gone. Members of the Missionaries of Charity prayed for their founder's intervention to help the sick woman.
"Her life of loving service to the poor has inspired many to follow the same path. Her witness and message are cherished by those of every religion as a sign that 'God still loves the world today," members of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she founded, said in a statement after Mother Teresa's beatification was announced.
During the War of 1812, British and Indian forces under Sir Isaac Brock defeat Americans under General Stephen Van Rensselaer at the Battle of Queenstown Heights, on the Niagara frontier in Ontario, Canada. The British victory, in which more than 1,000 U.S. troops were killed, wounded, or captured, effectively ended any further U.S. invasion of Canada. Sir Isaac Brock, Britain’s most talented general in the war, was killed during the battle.
Columbus didn’t set out to prove the earth was round.
Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so. As early as the sixth century B.C., the Greek mathematician Pythagoras surmised the world was round, and two centuries later Aristotle backed him up with astronomical observations. By 1492 most educated people knew the planet was not shaped like a pancake.
Columbus was likely not the first European to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
That distinction is generally given to the Norse Viking Leif Eriksson, who is believed to have landed in present-day Newfoundland around 1000 A.D., almost five centuries before Columbus set sail. Some historians even claim that Ireland’s Saint Brendan or other Celtic people crossed the Atlantic before Eriksson. While the United States commemorates Columbus—even though he never set foot on the North American mainland—with parades and a federal holiday, Leif Eriksson Day on October 9 receives little fanfare.
Nina and Pinta were not the actual names of two of Columbus’ three ships.
In 15th-century Spain, ships were traditionally named after saints. Salty sailors, however, bestowed less-than-sacred nicknames upon their vessels. Mariners dubbed one of the three ships on Columbus’s 1492 voyage the Pinta, Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute.” The Santa Clara, meanwhile, was nicknamed the Nina in honor of its owner, Juan Nino. Although the Santa Maria is called by its official name, its nickname was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built.
In the conclusion to an extremely embarrassing situation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower offers his apologies to Ghanian Finance Minister, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, who had been refused service at a restaurant in Dover, Delaware. It was one of the first of many such incidents in which African diplomats were confronted with racial segregation in the United States. While the matter might appear rather small relative to other events in the Cold War, the continued racial slights to African (and Asian) diplomats during the 1950s and 1960s were of utmost concern to U.S. officials. During those decades the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for the “hearts and minds” of hundreds of millions of people of color in Asia and Africa.
Racial discrimination in America–particularly when it was directed at representatives from those regions–was, as one U.S. official put it, the nation’s “Achilles’ heel.” Matters continued to deteriorate during the early 1960s, when dozens of diplomats from new nations in Africa and Asia faced housing discrimination in Washington, D.C., as well as a series of confrontations in restaurants, barbershops, and other places of business in and around the area. It was clear that American civil rights had become an international issue.
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. His "hunger to explore the world" led him to intersperse his collegiate pursuits with two long introspective journeys that would fundamentally change the way he viewed himself and the contemporary economic conditions in Latin America. The first expedition in 1950 was a 4,500 kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he installed a small engine. This was followed in 1951 by a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi) continental motorcycle trek through most of South America. For the latter, he took a year off from his studies to embark with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River.
On this day in 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; $3 billion in 2007 dollars) in damages. Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in ruins. Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets and sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire. The city averaged two fires per day in 1870; there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire of 1871
Is Asha Vahishta just a glorified version of the Ten Commandments - a set of religious rules writ large? Not really. Asha is not like the "Ten Commandments," because the Commandments, and the Torah, are prescriptive. Asha is descriptive. The commandment says, for instance,"Thou shalt not steal." What Asha would say, if it could talk, would be: "If you steal, you may get the owner of what you stole angry, and he will punish you or the civil law will do that; and if you get away with it in this world, when you die and come to judgement, it will be remembered that you stole."Asha is not "rules," but "law," not in the sense of "thou shalts" or "thou shalt not's" but in the sense of geometric axioms, or the laws of physics. I like to think of Asha as "the software of the universe" or perhaps its "operating system" in that it orders the working of all things, whether we like it or not. And unlike software, it can't be changed. Can the speed of light be changed, or the laws of mathematics or physics? The scientific method applies to Asha. There is no immutable Scripture telling us what Asha is; we learn by experience, hypothesis, experiment, proof, and demonstration. If what seems to be Asha doesn't make sense, it is not that Asha is wrong, but our own idea of it, our ignorance of Asha as it truly is.
Facebook initially planned to connect the world by producing its own satellites, but it might be tacking a different tack now.According to The Telegraph, a new agreement between Facebook and Eutelsat due to start in late 2016 will deliver free internet in Africa via an existing satellite.
Eutelsat says that the satellite capacity will provide “Direct-to-User” internet access using off the shelf equipment, so users in even the remotest parts of Africa can get online.
Facebook is also working on giant drones for providing internet access in remote areas, but that technology has only just begun being tested in the real world.
The satellite internet access will be provided via Internet.org, the company’s iniative dedicated to getting the world online. Internet.org recently came under fire for net neutrality issues, which led to a number of companies dropping support for the service.
Internet adoption globally has been slowing, primarily due to the challenges getting remote regions online — Facebook plans to tackle those connectivity issues heads on with this new partnership.
It significantly inhibits Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. Forged over 20 months of intense negotiations among Iran, the U.S., and five other world powers, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is designed to block four possible pathways to the bomb for 10 to 15 years. Iran must relinquish 97 percent of its enriched uranium stockpiles; remove two-thirds of its 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges; rebuild its heavy-water reactor so that it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium; and submit to ongoing, intrusive inspections. These measures are designed to increase Iran's "breakout time" to developing nuclear weapons from the current three months to at least a year. Republicans and Israel strongly opposed the deal, saying it does not guarantee that Iran won't cheat, and may only postpone the Islamic Republic's development of a nuclear weapon. But President Obama insisted that the choice was between a negotiated deal and war. "How can we in good conscience justify war," he asked, "before we've tested a diplomatic agreement?"
It will formally be adopted on Oct. 19, but "implementation day" won't be until the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms that Iran has complied with all its obligations. Every stage of Iran's nuclear-fuel supply chain — uranium mines and mills, enrichment plants, centrifuge factories — will be monitored by up to 150 IAEA inspectors, 24/7 video surveillance, and high-tech sensors. If Iran does cheat, said Aaron Stein, a nuclear nonproliferation expert, "the likelihood of getting caught is near 100 percent."
The United States believes that Russia has started carrying out air strikes in Syria in the vicinity of Homs, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that Moscow gave the United States a one-hour advanced notice of its operations.
The Russian Defense Ministry claims its planes destroyed an array of Islamic State targets, including command posts. But Syrian opposition groups accused Russia of targeting and killing dozens of civilians and non-IS rebels.
Almost as soon as the attacks began, critics questioned exactly who the Russian airstrikes were targeting. Many are worried those targets could include innocent civilians, as well as Western-backed Syrian rebels. But the Foreign Ministry’s chief spokeswoman quickly dismissed such suggestions, blaming Western and other media for spreading disinformation.
While most top officials, including Putin, have pitched the airstrikes as coming to the defense of a legitimate government under attack by terrorists, others see an even more epic fight.
The hugely influential Russian Orthodox Church, for example, called the intervention a “holy battle.”
“The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it,” Vsevolod Chaplin, a prominent church spokesman, told local media.
It might seem like a curious endorsement, but the church actually enjoys close ties with the Kremlin and often lends its open political support.
Russia’s Defense Ministry released this video Wednesday, saying the footage shows its airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria.
