Palmyra is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria.
Inhabited since the Neolithic period, it entered recorded history in the
early second millennium BC. Palmyra became part of the Roman Empire in
the first century AD. Palmyrene merchants established colonies along the
Silk Road and the city grew wealthy from trade caravans. Many monumental
projects were erected, such as the Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel,
and distinctive tower tombs. Palmyra reached the apex of its power in
the 260s, when its king Odaenathus defeated the Persian emperor
Shapur I. After Odaenathus's assassination in 267, his widow Zenobia
rebelled against Rome and conquered the Roman East. Palmyra was
destroyed in 273 by the Roman emperor Aurelian. Restored on a smaller
scale, it remained a minor trading center until it was sacked by the
Timurids in 1400 and became a small village. During the Syrian civil war
in 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant destroyed large parts
of the ancient city.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1791:
French inventor Claude Chappe and his brothers first
demonstrated the optical telegraph, a system that conveys information by
means of visual signals, using towers (replica pictured) with pivoting
crossarms.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph>
1901:
U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and once the
world's largest producers of steel, was founded by financier J. P.
Morgan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel>
1943:
World War II: Australian and U.S. air forces attacked and
destroyed a large Japanese naval convoy in the Bismarck Sea, north of
Papua New Guinea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bismarck_Sea>
1995:
Researchers at Fermilab in Illinois announced the discovery of
the top quark, the most massive of all observed elementary particles.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_quark>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
conversely:
1. (often conjunctive) With a reversed relationship.
2. (conjunctive, loosely) From another point of view; on the other hand.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conversely>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if
wrong, to be set right.
--Carl Schurz
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Schurz>