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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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