On this day in 1401, Turko-Mongol emperor
Timur (or Tamerlane) sacked Damascus.
Timur (or Tamerlane) sacked Damascus.
Timur had invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo and captured Damascus after defeating
the Mamluk army. The Mamluk sultan dispatched a deputation from Cairo, including
Ibn Khaldun, who negotiated with him, but after their withdrawal he put the city to
sack. The Umayyad Mosque was burnt and men and women taken into slavery. A
huge number of the city's artisans were taken to Timur's capital at Samarkand.
Many of the city's inhabitants were slaughtered and their heads piled up
in a field outside the north-east corner of the walls, where a city square
still bears the name burj al-ru'us, "the tower of heads".
This led to Timur's being publicly declared an enemy of Islam, as he was no longer killing only non-
Muslims. However, Ibn Khaldun praised Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other
conquerors of the time could not.
In a form of rectification, in 1400 Timur invaded Christian Armenia and Georgia.
Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local people were captured
as slaves, and many districts were depopulated.
He invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were
massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human
heads to show him. Some warriors were reportedly so unnerved that they killed prisoners
captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur.
I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.
—Timur, after the conquest of Aleppo
On this night in 1832, Joseph Smith Jr. was tarred & feathered by residents
of Hiram, Ohio.
(From the Observer & Telegraph, a local Ohio newspaper)
TRIUMPHS OF THE MORMON FAITH.
-- Several verbal statements agree in establishing the following facts:
That on Saturday night, March 24, a number of persons, some say 25 or 30,
disguised with coloured faces, entered the rooms in Hiram, where the two
Mormonite leaders, Smith and Rigdon were sleeping, and took them, together
with the pillows on which they slept, carried them a short distance and after
besmearing their bodies with tar, applied the contents of the pillows to the same.
disguised with coloured faces, entered the rooms in Hiram, where the two
Mormonite leaders, Smith and Rigdon were sleeping, and took them, together
with the pillows on which they slept, carried them a short distance and after
besmearing their bodies with tar, applied the contents of the pillows to the same.
Now Mr. Editor, I call this a base transaction, an unlawful act,
a work of darkness, a diabolical trick. But bad as it is, it proves
one important truth which every wise man knew before, that is,
that Satan has more power than the pretended prophets of Mormon.
It is said that they (Smith and Rigdon) had declared, in anticipation
of such an event, that it could not be done - that God would not suffer
it; that those who should attempt it, would be miraculously smitten
on the spot, and many such like things, which the event proves to be
false.
The McMahon murders occurred on this day
in 1922 in Belfast, Northern Ireland when six Irish
Catholic civilians were shot dead and two wounded
by policemen of the Ulster Special Constabulary.
The dead were aged between 15 and 50 and
all but one were members of the McMahon
family. The policemen broke into their house
at night and shot all eight men inside. It is
believed to have been a reprisal for the IRA's
killing of two policemen the day before.
Northern Ireland had been created ten months beforehand,
in the midst of the Irish War of Independence. During this
time, its police forces – especially the USC, which was
almost exclusively Protestant and unionist – were
implicated in a number of attacks on Catholic and
Irish nationalist civilians as reprisal for IRA attacks.
Fosse Ardeatine
On this day in 1944, the Ardeatine Massacre took place when German troops killed
335 Italian civilians in Rome. The massacre was a reprisal for a partisan attack
conducted on the previous day in central Rome. It had been decided that the
execution of ten Italians for each German policeman killed was a suitable ratio.
General Kurt Mälzer (above right), the military commander of
the city of Rome (who also proposed burning down part of
Rome in retaliation) passed this on to General Eberhard von
Mackensen, the commander of the Fourteenth Army, whose
jurisdiction included Rome. General Mackensen endorsed the
recommendation. In turn, the staff of the German Commander
-in-Chief South (Oberbefehlshaber Süd), passed this on to the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). That night, Adolf Hitler
authorized the reprisal, stipulating that it be carried out within
24 hours
The massacre was perpetrated without prior public notice in
what was then a little-frequented rural suburb of the city,
inside the tunnels of the disused quarries of pozzolana, near
the Via Ardeatina. By mistake, a total of 335 Italian the
prisoners were taken, five in excess of the 330 called for.
On March 24, led by SS officers Erich Priebke and Karl Hass,
they were transported to the Ardeatine caves in truckloads
and then, in groups of five, put to death inside the caves.
Since the killing squad mostly consisted of officers who had never killed before, Kappler had ordered
several cases of cognac delivered to the caves to calm their nerves. The officers were ordered to lead
the doomed prisoners into the caves with their hands tied behind their backs and then have them kneel
down so that the soldiers could place a bullet directly into the cerebellum, ensuring that no more than
one bullet would be needed per prisoner. The massacre took most of the day and soon degenerated into
a drunken shambles. Some of the victims' heads were blown off by the shots; others were only wounded
and may have survived until the explosions intended to seal the caves after the massacre was completed:
one youth and his father were found in each other's arms in a corner of the cave galleries which had been
not filled with the debris under which most victims had been buried. Some crawled into corners to die.
The bodies of the victims were placed in piles, typically
about a meter in height, and then buried under tons of
rock debris when German military engineers set explosives
to seal the caves and hide the atrocity. They remained
summarily buried and abandoned for over a year inside
the caves. Families of the victims were notified with
excruciating slowness by individual letter, if at all, a
strategy of coverup and concealment – "Night and Fog" –
designed to confuse, grieve, and intimidate surviving
relatives. Only after the Italian capital was liberated
by the Allies on June 4, 1944, were the bodies finally
found, exhumed, and at last given proper burial.
On this day in 1958, Elvis joined
the army.
JOHN LENNON: Up until Elvis joined the army, I thought it was beautiful music
and Elvis was for me and my generation what the Beatles were to the '60s. But
after he went into the army, I think they cut "les bollocks" off. They not only
shaved his hair off but I think they shaved between his legs, too. He played
some good stuff after the army, but it was never quite the same, It was like
something happened to him psychologically. Elvis really died the day he joined
the army. That's when they killed him, and the rest was a living death.
http://youtu.be/JosUZjWUAkQ
On this day in 1976, in Argentina, the armed forces overthrew the constitutional government of President Isabel Perón and started a 7-year dictatorial period self-styled the "National Reorganization Process".
The 1976 Argentine coup was a right-wing coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón on this day in
1976, in Argentina. In her place, a military junta was installed. The junta remained in power
until 1983.
Although political repression (the so-called "Dirty War") had begun before the
coup, it was heavily extended after the coup and resulted in the "disappearances"
of between 7,000 and 30,000 persons, depending on sources.
The United States Department of State
learned of the preparations of the coup
two months before.
Two days after the coup, U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State for Latin America,
William D. Rogers, stated: "This junta
is testing the basic proposition that
Argentina is not governable...I think
that's a distinctly odds-on choice."
"I think also we've got to expect a fair
amount of repression, probably a good
deal of blood, in Argentina before too
long. I think they're going to have to
come down very hard not only on the
terrorists but on the dissidents of trade
unions and their parties."
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated
that "Whatever chance they have, they will
need a little encouragement. Because I do
want to encourage them. I don't want to
give the sense that they're harassed by
the United States."
In June 1976, when human rights violations by the junta were criticized in
the US, Kissinger reiterated his support for the junta, directly addressing
himself to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti
(above, left) during a meeting in Santiago de Chile.
March 24 is now designated the Day of Remembrance for
Truth and Justice in Argentina.
On this day in 1989, the Exxon Valdez spilled approximately 11 million gallons
of oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska.
The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds. The amount of oil
spilled is roughly equivalent to 17 olympic-sized swimming pools. It eventually
covered 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline.
The Exxon Valdez was repaired and renamed the Sea River Mediterranean.
It is used to haul oil across the Atlantic to this very day. However, the ship
is prohibited by law from returning to Prince William Sound.
On this day in 1999, NATO began air bombardments against
Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO attacked a sovereign
country.
Born This Day:
1874 - Harry Houdini
1887 – Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
http://youtu.be/lUtg7kfB74M
1897 - Wilhelm Reich
http://youtu.be/LqigQxX82Qg
1909 -Clyde Barrow (r, with Bonnie Parker)
1915 – "Gorgeous" George Wagner
http://youtu.be/CvZ0Qlf35xo
1919 -Lawrence Ferlinghetti
http://youtu.be/pE_8WK3tBuE
1930 – Steve McQueen
http://youtu.be/xoYFfcBzPlc
1935 – Carol Kaye
http://youtu.be/Hrg7-8xvYDY
1949 - Nick Lowe
http://youtu.be/m6hzkBihaew
1970 – Lara Flynn Boyle
Died This Day:
2008 - Neil Aspinall (back row, right)
