This Day In History

Today's Birthday

Theodor Herzl (1860)
Herzl was the founder of modern Zionism. A journalist, he was sent to Paris to report on the Dreyfus Affair and was appalled by the vicious anti-Semitism he observed. He decided that Jewish assimilation in Europe was impossible and that the only solution to the Jewish problem was the establishment of a Jewish national state. He expressed his ideas in his famous pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, and organized the first Zionist World Congress, serving as its first president. Where is he buried? MORE

This Day in History

King Hussein of Jordan Enthroned (1953)
King Hussein reigned from the early 1950s to 1999. He ascended the throne after his father, King Talal, was declared mentally unfit to rule. Hussein generally espoused a pro-Western policy that brought him into conflict with Arab leftist leaders and Palestinians in Jordan. In 1991, he refused to join the forces against Iraq in Gulf War I, but he later encouraged peace negotiations and signed a peace treaty with what country? MORE