The Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) was a public statement issued by the British government during World War I announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a minority Jewish population. It represented the first expression of public support for Zionism by a major political power. The term "national home" had no precedent in international law, and was intentionally vague as to whether a Jewish state was contemplated. The second half of the declaration was added to satisfy opponents, who had claimed that it would otherwise prejudice the position of the local population of Palestine and encourage antisemitism against Jews worldwide. While the declaration called for political rights in Palestine for Jews, rights for the vast majority of the local population, the Palestinian Arabs, were limited to the civil and religious spheres. The declaration greatly increased popular support for Zionism, and led to the creation of Mandatory Palestine, which later became Israel and the Palestinian territories. Historians consider it one of the causes of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

619:

Emperor Gaozu allowed the assassination of a khagan of the Western Turkic Khaganate by Eastern Turkic rivals, one of the earliest events in the Tang campaigns against the Western Turks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_campaigns_against_the_Western_Turks

1932:

The Australian military began a "war against emus", a flightless native bird (specimen pictured) blamed for widespread damage to crops in Western Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

1949:

The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ended with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch%E2%80%93Indonesian_Round_Table_Conference

1957:

A large number of people witnessed a fiery object in the sky near Levelland, Texas, which the United States Air Force said was ball lightning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelland_UFO_Case

2007:

In Tbilisi, Georgia, up to 100,000 people demonstrated against the allegedly corrupt government of president Mikheil Saakashvili. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Georgian_demonstrations

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

forlorn: 1. Abandoned, deserted, left behind. 2. Miserable, as when lonely after being abandoned. 3. Unlikely to succeed. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/forlorn

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception. They are either inductive inferences from a large body of facts, the common truth in which they express, or, in their origin at least, physical hypotheses of a causal nature serving to explain phenomena with undeviating precision, and to enable us to predict new combinations of them. They are in all cases, and in the strictest sense of the term, probable conclusions, approaching, indeed, ever and ever nearer to certainty, as they receive more and more of the confirmation of experience. But of the character of probability, in the strict and proper sense of that term, they are never wholly divested. On the other hand, the knowledge of the laws of the mind does not require as its basis any extensive collection of observations. The general truth is seen in the particular instance, and it is not confirmed by the repetition of instances.   --George Boole https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Boole