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Ashura in Tehran

On Ashura — 11 December 1978 — an estimated two million people marched through Tehran to drumbeats, condemning Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and, by name, US President Jimmy Carter.

The march was peaceful. Opposition marshals worked to keep discipline, and the contemporary UPI report describes no violence; the processions combined Shiʿite mourning practices, including breast-beating, with explicitly political marching against the monarchy.

Who organised it

Ashura offered a protected religious occasion around which clerics, bazaar organisations and the National Front could mobilise. National Front representatives had negotiated procession arrangements with government security officials, and marshals reportedly tried to remove young leftists shouting slogans more radical than the organisers wanted.

The secular-nationalist leader Karim Sanjabi was publicly acclaimed during the processions, while Ruhollah Khomeini's network treated Ashura as a climax of the struggle against the Shah.

What the crowds demanded

Resolutions associated with the two-day Tasuʿa and Ashura demonstrations demanded the Shah's abdication, Khomeini's return, political freedom and economic justice.

The numbers are estimates, not counts, and accounts disagree about which day produced the larger Tehran crowd: a contemporary figure of 1.5 million is given for 10 December, and a retrospective estimate of 6–9 million covers all of Iran across both days.

The demonstrations did not remove the Shah that day; he remained in Iran until 16 January 1979.

10 February 1990: Moscow says yes in principle

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow on 10 February 1990 to discuss the rapidly worsening situation in the GDR and the future of Germany. Gorbachev assured him that the Soviet Union would respect the Germans' decision whether to live in one state.

Germans could determine the timing and the route to unity, Gorbachev said. That evening Kohl publicly announced the Soviet assurance as the meeting's historic result.

What Kohl offered, and what stayed open

Kohl offered contractual confirmation of the Oder–Neisse border while pressing the case that the GDR's political and economic situation made movement toward unity urgent. Both leaders agreed that German unity had to be embedded in the European security order and wider East–West relations.

They did not settle the reunified state's alliance membership. Gorbachev favoured a non-aligned Germany; Kohl said the alliance question would require consultation with Washington, Paris and London.

The obstacle that was removed

Gorbachev had already told East German premier Hans Modrow on 30 January that the Soviet Union did not question eventual unity, and American diplomacy encouraged Kohl to obtain a direct assurance. George H. W. Bush had sent Kohl a pre-visit message supporting reunification and continued German membership in NATO.

The meeting removed a potential Soviet veto of German unity in principle, letting Bonn and East Berlin accelerate economic and political planning. NATO membership, borders, foreign forces and the Four Powers' rights all still required settlement, and the alliance question was not resolved until Kohl and Gorbachev's negotiations in July 1990.

9 November 2020: the first interim readout

Pfizer and BioNTech announced on 9 November 2020 that the first interim analysis of their ongoing Phase III trial had found BNT162b2 more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in participants with no evidence of prior infection.

An independent data-monitoring committee had run that analysis the previous day. The estimate rested on 94 confirmed COVID-19 cases distributed across the vaccine and placebo groups, counted from seven days after the second dose.

What the companies said they still lacked

The trial was continuing, and the companies stressed that the efficacy estimate could change.

43,538 participants had enrolled and 38,955 had received a second dose by 8 November. Even so, the program had not yet reached the FDA's required median two-month safety follow-up for an emergency-use application.

Interim data, not an authorization

Nothing was authorized and nobody was vaccinated because of the release. It was a company press statement carrying interim numbers, not a regulatory decision or a peer-reviewed paper.

The finding concerned prevention of symptomatic COVID-19 under the trial's own endpoint. It did not establish sterilizing immunity or prevention of transmission.

The widely repeated 95% belongs to a later document, not this one: the final analysis reported 95.0% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 after dose two, with a 95% confidence interval of 90.3% to 97.6%.

27 December 537

The newly constructed Hagia Sophia was inaugurated in Constantinople on 27 December 537 under Justinian I, opening as the city's new Great Church and patriarchal cathedral. Menas was the patriarch in office.

It replaced the basilica destroyed in the Nika revolt of January 532; construction had run from 532 to 537.

Designed by mathematicians

Procopius describes Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus as the organizers and designers who realized Justinian's project. They were not ordinary master masons but figures trained in mathematics, mechanics and geometry.

The inaugurated church combined a longitudinal basilica with a vast central dome carried through arches, piers and pendentives.

Procopius said the dome appeared to hang from heaven rather than rest on masonry.

The dome you can see is not this dome

The design was exceptionally daring, and parts of that first structural system collapsed in 558 — about twenty years after the inauguration.

What stands today is substantially the replacement finished afterward, so measurements of the present dome cannot be projected back onto the lower original.

Details such as Justinian's alleged declaration that he had surpassed Solomon come from later tradition, not from anything securely documented on the day.

June–July 712

Musa ibn Nusayr crossed from North Africa into Iberia in June or July 712 — Ramadan 93 in the Islamic calendar — with a force reported as 18,000.

That force was composed mostly of Arabs, sharply unlike Tariq ibn Ziyad's predominantly Berber army of the previous year.

A different road, and one long siege

Musa followed a route distinct from Tariq's, taking or occupying centers including Medina Sidonia, Carmona and Seville before continuing toward Mérida. The order varies between accounts.

Seville was the exception to the rapid urban advances. A narrative explicitly following the much later historian al-Maqqari says the city resisted for several months before capitulating; the familiar "exactly three months" is not securely established.

He left his son and kept going

Musa left his son Abd al-Aziz in Seville while continuing the campaign. Seville became his administrative base.

The two invading commanders did not immediately combine: the consulted reference places Musa's meeting with Tariq in the Toledo area in 713.

The detailed narrative of all of this depends substantially on Arabic sources written centuries after the events.

27 November 1095, in a field outside Clermont

As the Council of Clermont was ending on 27 November 1095, Urban II addressed churchmen and local laypeople assembled outdoors in a field outside the town — at the start of winter.

He called on Frankish fighting men to vow to march east in aid of eastern Christians and toward the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre.

The canon, and the cue

The council's surviving crusade canon made the journey a penitential act: for a person traveling out of devotion rather than for honor or financial gain, it was to count in place of all penance.

Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, publicly came forward to accept the expedition and the cross. Scholars regard his gesture, and those of other senior clerics, as probably arranged in advance.

What did not happen that day

No transcript survives. The chroniclers' versions were composed years later, after Jerusalem had been captured, and differ in wording, emphasis and the crowd's reported response. Whether the crowd spontaneously cried "Deus vult" cannot be established; later reports may describe a planned acclamation.

Peter the Hermit cannot be shown to have begun preaching on 27 November. The earliest defensible chronology places his known activity after Clermont, starting in Berry during the winter of 1095–96.

The mass mobilization unfolded over the following weeks and months; thousands did not leave Clermont immediately. Urban fixed the expedition's departure for 15 August 1096.

Monday, 13 June 1099

Six days after reaching Jerusalem, on Monday 13 June 1099, the crusaders attacked the walls. The contemporary Gesta Francorum says they would have taken the city had sufficient ladders been ready.

Fulcher of Chartres describes an assault launched early in the morning from all sides, accompanied by trumpets, which continued until the sixth hour — roughly noon — before the attackers abandoned it.

Not one commander's attack

This was not Godfrey's assault alone. Fulcher says the city was attacked from every side, and Raymond of Toulouse's contingent was operating separately from Mount Zion.

The sources disagree over individual exploits and even the number of ladders: later narratives attach Raimbald and Tancred to a single ladder, while Fulcher says only that there were too few.

After noon, a different plan

The assault achieved no entry. The leaders then ordered artisans to construct siege machines rather than attempt another improvised escalade.

Water was already the pressure: the army's horses were reportedly led six miles to drink, while the defenders drew on cisterns inside the walls.

No siege towers existed on 13 June; those belong to the final assault in July.

Arévalo, 2 July 1494

At Arévalo on 2 July 1494, Ferdinand, Isabella and their heir Prince Juan examined, approved, confirmed and ratified the agreement their representatives had executed at Tordesillas twenty-five days earlier.

The three swore on the Cross and Gospels to observe the treaty for themselves, their heirs, their kingdoms and their subjects.

Three signatures and a lead seal

The instrument was signed "I, the King; I, the Queen; I, the Prince," and ordered sealed with a hanging lead seal on coloured silk threads.

Prince Juan was not present merely as a witness. The treaty had expressly required the monarchs' son and heir to sanction their ratification.

The Portuguese ambassadors Ruy de Sousa, João de Sousa and Aires de Almada were present when the monarchs and prince swore.

Half a bargain until September

The ratified terms recognised the 370-league demarcation and the respective Portuguese and Castilian zones negotiated on 7 June.

Full reciprocal confirmation still awaited Portugal. João II ratified at Setúbal on 5 September 1494.

Calling this Spain's ratification is anachronistic shorthand: Ferdinand and Isabella ruled a composite monarchy, and the treaty's overseas allocation was framed principally as Castilian.

Off the press at Wittenberg

Around 21 September 1522 printing was completed at Wittenberg on the first edition of Luther's German New Testament, conventionally called the September Testament. Melchior Lotter the Younger printed it for Christian Döring and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Its title was Das Newe Testament Deutzsch. A scholarly study notes copies may have come off the press several days earlier; Princeton catalogues the edition as circa 21 September.

Erasmus's Greek, Cranach's woodcuts

Luther's chief textual source was Erasmus's edition of the Greek New Testament, and the printed book carried his own prefaces and marginal notes. Cranach's workshop supplied twenty-one full-page woodcuts illustrating Revelation — a book Luther's own preface treated with deep reservations.

The Wartburg first draft took about eleven weeks, but that was the draft only; revision, typesetting, illustration and printing ran on in Wittenberg from roughly May to September.

A second edition by December

An estimated first run of about 3,000 copies — modern discussions propose figures from roughly 2,000 to 5,000 — reportedly sold out within about three months.

A revised second Wittenberg edition, the December Testament, followed that same year. This was the New Testament only, and it was not the first German Bible; numerous German biblical editions predated Luther, and his complete German Bible appeared in 1534.

18 November 1761: H4 goes to sea

On 18 November 1761, William Harrison sailed from Portsmouth aboard HMS Deptford with H4, beginning the watch's first transatlantic sea trial. The Commissioners of Longitude had authorized a Jamaica voyage, and William took charge of the timekeeper because his father was elderly.

The marine chronometer was not invented that year. H4 was already dated and recorded as completed in 1759; what 1761 marks is a live test aboard a rolling Royal Navy ship.

Under four locks

For the trial the watch was kept in a box secured by four different locks, and could be handled for winding only in the presence of the keyholders.

Its job was to carry Portsmouth reference time across the ocean, for comparison with local solar time in Jamaica. A chronometer does not display longitude; the navigator gets it from the difference between the two.

Madeira, and an argument about seconds

On the outward voyage William used H4 to predict that Madeira would be sighted earlier than the crew expected. The correct prediction impressed Deptford's captain.

The ship reached Port Royal on 19 January 1762, after 80 days. The celebrated 5.1-second result was Harrison's own calculation after applying a daily rate; without that correction the reported error was 3 minutes 37.9 seconds, and in August 1762 the Commissioners ruled the experiments insufficient to determine longitude at sea.

26 August 1920: signed quietly at home

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed a proclamation on the morning of 26 August 1920 certifying that the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified by the required 36 states. He signed at his Washington home, without a public ceremony or photographers, and despite suffragists' hopes to attend.

No grand signing photograph exists as a result. Colby reportedly considered effectuating suffrage more important than reenacting it for movie cameras.

Eight days after the vote that counted

Ratification had been completed on 18 August, when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve. Governor Albert H. Roberts signed the state's certificate on 24 August, which let the federal government certify the completed ratification.

The proclamation did not create the amendment's legal force. Supreme Court amendment jurisprudence treats consummated ratification, not the secretary of state's later proclamation, as controlling.

What the certified text covered

The proclamation certified that the prohibition against denying or abridging a citizen's vote on account of sex had become part of the Constitution. About 26 million adult women were nominally eligible to vote after adoption — but many already voted under state law, and others remained excluded by citizenship rules and discriminatory practices.

That night Colby appeared at a National American Woman Suffrage Association mass meeting and read a congratulatory message from President Woodrow Wilson.

7 September 1927, at 202 Green Street

Philo Farnsworth and his team tested an all-electronic television system at his San Francisco laboratory on 7 September 1927. The Television Academy, the U.S. Census Bureau and IEEE all place the test on that date, not in May as this event's supplied date states. He was 21.

His image-dissector camera tube converted an image into an electrical signal and sent it to a receiver in an adjacent room. The image was a single straight line drawn on a glass slide.

No spinning disk

The experiment demonstrated electronic image transmission without the rotating scanning disks used by the mechanical television systems of the day.

Elma “Pem” Farnsworth, who worked in the laboratory, recalled dancing around the room while Philo's hands shook; his response, she said, was “There you've got television.” Her brother Cliff Gardner had learned glassblowing to build the specialized vacuum tubes.

A private result

This was a laboratory milestone, not a public demonstration or a practical broadcast system capable of ordinary three-dimensional scenes. Farnsworth's demonstration for reporters came on 3 September 1928.

About eight months after the line, with impatient investors wanting to see money in the invention, he transmitted a dollar sign. George Everson and Leslie Gorrell had financed the California laboratory and were the backers awaiting proof that the system worked.