March 7 in History

The Third Council of Constantinople, counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and by certain other Western Churches, met in 680–681 and condemned monoenergism and monothelitism as heretical and defined Jesus Christ as having two energies and two wills (divine and human).

Conrad III (German: Konrad; Italian: Corrado; 1093 or 1094 – 15 February 1152) of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was from 1116 to 1120 Duke of Franconia, from 1127 to 1135 anti-king of his predecessor Lothair III, and from 1138 until his death in 1152 King of the Romans in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the son of Duke Frederick I of Swabia and Agnes, a daughter of Emperor Henry IV. His reign saw the start of the conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. He was involved in the failed Second Crusade with Louis VII, where he would fight and lose at Doryleum and would later fall ill and return to Constantinople. After recuperating, he went to Jerusalem but would experience a string of failed sieges. Later returning from the Crusade, he was entangled in some conflicts with Welf VI's claim to the Duchy of Bavaria. On his deathbed, he designated his nephew Frederick Barbarossa as his successor instead of his son, Frederick IV, Duke of Swabia.

The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris. The Condemnations of 1277 are traditionally linked to an investigation requested by Pope John XXI, although whether he actually supported drawing up a list of condemnations is unclear. Approximately sixteen lists of censured theses were issued by the University of Paris during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of these lists of propositions were put together into systematic collections of prohibited articles. Of these, the Condemnations of 1277 are considered particularly important by those historians who consider that they encouraged scholars to question the tenets of Aristotelian science. From this perspective, some historians maintain that the condemnations had positive effects on the development of science, perhaps even representing the beginnings of modern science.

The Ottoman Empire, also known historically as Turkey or the Turkish Empire, was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. Further conquests by Selim I led the Sultans to adopt the title of caliph. With its capital at Constantinople and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. Ruling over diverse peoples, the empire granted varying levels of autonomy to its many confessional communities, or millets, to manage their own affairs per Islamic law. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became a global power. Modern academic consensus posits that the empire began to decline after defeat in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, but continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. The Ottoman Empire fell behind technologically from the rest of Europe by the late 18th century as imperial authority fragmented. Further defeats from Austria and Russia culminated in the loss of territory, and with rising nationalism after the French Revolution, a number of new states emerged in the Balkans. Following Mahmud II's reign and the Tanzimat reforms over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became more powerful and organised internally as a new Ottoman identity took hold. In the 1876 revolution, the Ottoman Empire attempted constitutional monarchy, before reverting to an absolute monarchy under Abdul Hamid II, following the Great Eastern Crisis. Over the course of the late 19th century, Ottoman intellectuals known as Young Turks sought to liberalise and rationalise society and politics along Western lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which reestablished a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars, the CUP became increasingly radicalised and embraced Turkish nationalism, leading to a coup d'état in 1913 that established a dictatorship. In the 19th and in the start of 20th centuries, persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire resulted in large-scale loss of life and mass migration into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea. The CUP joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt, and engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against the occupying Allies, led to the end of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922.

Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief restoration during the Hundred Days in 1815. He rose to prominence as a general during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe and the Middle East during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a statesman, he implemented numerous legal and administrative reforms in France and Europe.

The Battle of Craonne (7 March 1814) was fought between an Imperial French army under Emperor Napoleon I opposing a combined army of Imperial Russians and Prussians led by Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. The War of the Sixth Coalition engagement began when the bulk of Napoleon's army tried to drive Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov's 22,000 Russians off the Chemin des Dames plateau to the west of Craonne. After a bitter struggle, Napoleon's attacks compelled Vorontsov's force to withdraw, but French casualties exceeded Russian losses. While the battle raged, Blücher's attempt to turn Napoleon's east flank ended in failure due to poor planning. In late February 1814, Blücher's army separated from the main Allied army of Austrian field marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, moving northwest and making a dash at Paris. Napoleon left Marshal Jacques MacDonald with one army to observe Schwarzenberg and started after Blücher with another army. Blücher evaded Napoleon's attempt to trap him and retreated north toward Laon, picking up reinforcements as he went. Russian forces under Ferdinand von Wintzingerode and a Prussian corps led by Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow would soon give Blücher a huge numerical advantage over the French. Napoleon came into contact with Vorontsov's corps on the evening of 6 March, believing that he had Blücher on the run. The next contest would be the Battle of Laon on 9–10 March. Craonne is located 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast of Laon and about 90 kilometres (56 mi) northeast of Paris.

The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, and the U.S. House of Representatives is the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the Constitution to make and pass or defeat federal legislation.

Alexander Graham Bell ( ; born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices, which eventually culminated in his being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, on March 7, 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including ground-breaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Bell also had a strong influence on the National Geographic Society and its magazine while serving as its second president from 1898 to 1903. For National Geographic, Bell wrote under the pseudonym H. A. Largelamb, an anagram of his name. Beyond his work in engineering, Bell had a deep interest in the emerging science of heredity. His work in this area has been called "the soundest, and most useful study of human heredity proposed in nineteenth-century America ... Bell's most notable contribution to basic science, as distinct from invention."

The Second Boer War was a conflict fought between 1899 and 1902 between the British Empire and the Boer republics (the South African Republic and Orange Free State), triggered by the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, specifically the Witwatersrand gold fields, and the ensuing political dispute over the voting rights of British expatriates (Uitlanders). In 1877, the British annexed the bankrupt Transvaal, and the British military neutralized the regional threat of the Zulu Kingdom in 1879 in the Anglo-Zulu War. With their borders secure, the Boers subsequently revolted and regained their independence after defeating the British in the First Boer War (1880–1881). The Witwatersrand Gold Rush caused an influx of "foreigners" (Uitlanders), most of them British from the Cape Colony, to the South African Republic (SAR), an independent Boer Republic. As they were permitted to vote only after 14 years' residence, they protested to the British authorities in the Cape. Negotiations failed at the botched Bloemfontein Conference in June 1899. The conflict broke out in October after the British government decided to send 10,000 troops. The war had three phases. In the first, the Boers mounted preemptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging British garrisons at Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley. The Boers won victories at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso and Spion Kop. In the second phase, British fortunes changed when their commanding officer, General Redvers Buller, was replaced by Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, who relieved the besieged cities and invaded the Boer republics at the head of a 180,000-strong expeditionary force. The Boers, aware that they were unable to resist such a force, refrained from fighting pitched battles, thereby allowing the British to occupy both republics and their capitals. Boer politicians fled or went into hiding; the British annexed the two republics in 1900. In Britain, the Conservative ministry attempted to capitalise by calling an early general election, dubbed a "khaki election". In the third phase, Boer fighters launched a guerrilla campaign. They used hit-and-run attacks and ambushes against the British for two years. The guerrilla campaign proved difficult for the British to defeat, due to unfamiliarity with tactics and support among civilians. British high command ordered scorched earth policies as part of a counterinsurgency campaign. Over 100,000 Boer civilians were forcibly relocated into concentration camps, where 26,000 died, by starvation and disease. Native Africans were interned to prevent them from supplying the Boers; 20,000 died. British mounted infantry were deployed to track down guerrillas, and few combatants were killed in action, most dying from disease. Kitchener offered terms to remaining Boer leaders to end the conflict. Eager to ensure Boers were released from the camps, most Boer commanders accepted the terms in the Treaty of Vereeniging, surrendering in May 1902. The former republics were transformed into the British colonies of the Transvaal and Orange River, and in 1910 were merged with the Natal and Cape Colonies to form the Union of South Africa, a self-governing colony within the British Empire. British expeditionary efforts were aided significantly by colonial forces from the Cape Colony, the Natal, Rhodesia, and many volunteers from the British Empire. Native African recruits contributed increasingly to the British effort. International public opinion was sympathetic to the Boers and hostile to the British. Even within the UK, there existed significant opposition to the war. As a result, the Boer cause attracted volunteers from neutral countries, including the German Empire, the United States, Russia and parts of the British Empire, such as Australia and Ireland. Some consider the war the beginning of questioning the British Empire's global dominance, due to the war's surprising duration and unforeseen losses suffered by the British. A trial for British war crimes, including the killings of civilians and prisoners of war, was opened in January 1902. The war had a lasting effect on the region and on British domestic politics.

The Labin Republic or Albona Republic (Croatian: Labinska republika, Italian: Repubblica di Albona) was a short-lived self-governing republic that was proclaimed by miners in the Istrian city of Labin (Albona) on March 7, 1921, during a mining strike. It was created in what has been described as the world's first anti-fascist uprising. On April 8, the Italian authorities suppressed the strike by force.

The Parliament House (Finnish: Eduskuntatalo [ˈedusˌkuntɑˌtɑlo], Swedish: Riksdagshuset) is the seat of the Parliament of Finland. It is located in the Finnish capital Helsinki, in the district of Etu-Töölö.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The 9th Armored Division was a light armored division of the United States Army during World War II. In honor of their World War II service, the 9th was officially nicknamed the "Phantom Division."

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 307 was a scheduled international flight with several domestic legs in the United States with the routing Washington, DC–Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Detroit–Madison–Rochester–Minneapolis-St. Paul–Winnipeg. On Tuesday, March 7, 1950, a Martin 2-0-2, registered N93050, was operating the flight when it collided with a flagpole at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on approach to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. During an attempt to make an emergency landing, a section of the left wing departed the aircraft, rendering it uncontrollable and causing it to crash into the Doughty family house in the Lynnhurst neighborhood of Minneapolis. All three crew members and ten passengers on board were killed, as were two children, Janet and Tom Doughty, and the family dog inside the house.

The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations led by the United States under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC).

Ali Razmara, also known as Haj Ali Razmara (Persian: علی رزم‌آرا, romanized: ali Razm-ārā; 30 March 1901 – 7 March 1951), was an Iranian military officer and politician who served as the prime minister of Iran from 1950 to 1951. He was assassinated by 26-year-old Khalil Tahmasebi of the Fada'iyan-e Islam organization outside the Shah Mosque in Tehran at the age of 49. Razmara was the third Iranian prime minister to be assassinated. In January 1965, Hasan Ali Mansur became the fourth Iranian Prime Minister to be assassinated, also by a Fada'iyan-e Islam member.

The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement. Since the late 19th century, Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of Jim Crow laws that had disenfranchised the millions of African Americans across the South and enforced racial segregation. The initial voter registration drive, started in 1963 by the African-American Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) failed as local White officials arrested the organizers and otherwise harassed Blacks wishing to register to vote. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended segregation but the situation in Selma changed little. The DCVL then invited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the activists of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to amplify the efforts, and these figures drew more prominent people to Alabama. Local and regional protests began in January 1965, with 3,000 people arrested by the end of February. On February 26, activist and deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot several days earlier by state trooper James Bonard Fowler during a peaceful march in nearby Marion. To defuse and refocus the Black community's outrage, James Bevel, who was directing SCLC's Selma voting rights movement, called for a march of dramatic length, from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, calling for an unhindered exercise of the right to vote. The first march took place on March 7, 1965, led by figures including Bevel and Amelia Boynton, but was ended by state troopers and county possemen, who charged on about 600 unarmed protesters with batons and tear gas after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the direction of Montgomery. The event became known as Bloody Sunday. Law enforcement beat Boynton unconscious, and the media publicized worldwide a picture of her lying wounded on the bridge. The second march took place two days later but King cut it short as a federal court issued a temporary injunction against further marches. That night, an anti-civil rights group murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston. The third march, which started on March 21, was escorted by the Alabama National Guard under federal control, the FBI and federal marshals (segregationist governor George Wallace refused to protect the protesters). Thousands of marchers averaged 10 mi (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80 (US 80), reaching Montgomery on March 24. The following day, 25,000 people staged a demonstration on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. The violence of "Bloody Sunday" and Reeb's murder resulted in a national outcry, and the marches were widely discussed in national and international news media. The protesters campaigned for a new federal voting rights law to enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment. President Lyndon B. Johnson seized the opportunity and held a historic, nationally televised joint session of Congress on March 15, asking lawmakers to pass what is now known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He enacted it on August 6, removing obstacles for Blacks to register en masse. The march route is memorialized and designated as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.

On 7 March 1965, an Aeroflot Lisunov Li-2 operating as Aeroflot Flight 542 (Abakan to Kyzyl) crashed shortly after takeoff from Abakan. Approximately 40 minutes after departure, the aircraft banked left and dived into the mountains of the Krasnoyarsk Krai region of the USSR. All 31 passengers and crew died, making it the deadliest known accident involving the Li-2.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (17 March 1920 – 15 August 1975) was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary, statesman, activist, and diarist who was the founding president of Bangladesh. As the leader of Bangladesh, he led the country as its president and prime minister from 1972 until his assassination in a coup d'état in 1975. Born in an aristocratic Bengali Muslim family in Tungipara, Mujib emerged as a student activist in the province of Bengal during the final years of the British Raj. He was a member of the All-India Muslim League, supported Muslim nationalism, and advocated for the establishment of Pakistan in his early political career. In 1949, he became part of a liberal, secular and left-wing faction which later became the Awami League. In the 1950s, he was elected to Pakistan's parliament where he defended the rights of East Bengal. Mujib served 13 years in prison during the British Raj and Pakistani rule. By the 1960s, Mujib adopted Bengali nationalism and soon became the undisputed leader of East Pakistan. He became popular for opposing West Pakistan's political, ethnic and institutional discrimination against the Bengalis of East Pakistan; leading the six-point autonomy movement, he challenged the rule of Pakistani president Ayub Khan. In 1970, Mujib led the Awami League to win Pakistan's first general election. When the Pakistani military junta under President Yahya Khan refused to transfer power, he gave the 7 March speech in 1971 where he vaguely called out for the independence movement. In the late hours of 25 March 1971, the Pakistan Army arrested Sheikh Mujib on charges of treason and carried out a genocide against the Bengali civilians of East Pakistan. In the early hours of the next day (26 March 1971), he issued the Proclamation of Bangladeshi Independence, which was later broadcast by Bengali army officer Major (later Lieutenant General) Ziaur Rahman on behalf of Sheikh Mujib, which ultimately marked the outbreak of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Bengali nationalists declared him the head of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, while he was confined in a jail in West Pakistan. After the independence of Bangladesh, Mujib returned to Bangladesh in January 1972 as the leader of a war-devastated country. In the following years, he played an important role in rebuilding Bangladesh, constructing a secular constitution for the country, transforming Pakistani era state apparatus, bureaucracy, armed forces, and judiciary into an independent state, initiating the first general election and normalizing diplomatic ties with most of the world. His foreign policy during the time was dominated by the principle "friendship to all and malice to none". He remained a close ally to Gandhi's India and Brezhnev's Soviet Union, while balancing ties with the United States. He gave the first Bengali speech to the UN General Assembly in 1974. Mujib's government proved largely unsuccessful in curbing political and economic anarchy and corruption in post-independence Bangladesh, which ultimately gave rise to a left-wing insurgency. To quell the insurgency, he formed Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, a special paramilitary force similar to the Gestapo, which was involved in various human rights abuses, massacres, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and rapes. Mujib's four-year regime was the only socialist period in Bangladesh's history, which was marked with huge economic mismanagement and failure, leading to the high mortality rate in the deadly famine of 1974. In 1975, he launched the Second Revolution, under which he installed a one party regime and abolished all kinds of civil liberties and democratic institutions, by which he "institutionalized autocracy" and made himself the "unimpeachable" President of Bangladesh, effectively for life, which lasted for six months and twenty days. On 15 August 1975, he was assassinated along with most of his family members in his Dhanmondi 32 residence in a coup d'état. Sheikh Mujib's post-independence legacy remains divisive among Bangladeshis due to his economic mismanagement, the famine of 1974, human rights violations, and authoritarianism. Nevertheless, most Bangladeshis credit him for leading the country to independence in 1971 and restoring the Bengali sovereignty after over two centuries following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, for which he is honoured as Bangabandhu (lit. 'Friend of Bengal'). He was voted the Greatest Bengali of All Time in a 2004 BBC opinion poll. His 7 March speech in 1971 is recognized by UNESCO for its historic value, and was listed in the Memory of the World Register. Many of his diaries and travelogues were published many years after his death and have been translated into several languages.

On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated about 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 16:39:13 UTC (11:39:13 a.m. EST, local time at the launch site). It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft while in flight. The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the 10th flight for the orbiter and the 25th flight of the NASA's Space Shuttle program. The crew was scheduled to deploy a commercial communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit, in addition to taking schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe into space under the Teacher in Space Project. This latter task resulted in a higher-than-usual media interest in and coverage of the mission, and the launch and subsequent disaster were seen live in many schools across the United States. The cause of the disaster was the failure of the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in the right Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). The record-low temperatures on the morning of the launch had stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints. Shortly after liftoff the seals were breached, and hot pressurized gas from within the SRB leaked through the joint and burned through the aft attachment strut connecting it to the external propellant tank (ET), then into the tank itself. The collapse of the ET's internal structures and the rotation of the SRB that followed propelled the shuttle stack, traveling at a speed of Mach 1.92, into a direction that allowed aerodynamic forces to tear the orbiter apart. Both SRBs detached from the now-destroyed ET and continued to fly uncontrollably until the range safety officer (RSO) sent a signal to destroy them. The crew compartment containing human remains, and many other fragments from the shuttle, were recovered from the ocean floor after a three-month search and recovery operation. The exact timing of the deaths of the crew is not known, but several crew members are thought to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. The orbiter had no escape system, and the impact of the crew compartment at terminal velocity with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable. The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the Space Shuttle program. President Ronald Reagan created the Rogers Commission to investigate the accident. The commission criticized NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes that had contributed to the accident. Test data since 1977 had demonstrated a potentially catastrophic flaw in the SRBs' O-rings, but neither NASA nor SRB manufacturer Morton Thiokol had addressed this known defect. NASA managers also disregarded engineers' warnings about the dangers of launching in low temperatures and did not report these technical concerns to their superiors. As a result of this disaster, NASA established the Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance, and arranged for deployment of commercial satellites from expendable launch vehicles, rather than from a crewed orbiter. The construction of a new Space Shuttle orbiter, Endeavour, was approved in 1987 to replace Challenger, and the new orbiter first flew in 1992. Subsequent missions were launched with redesigned SRBs and their crews wore pressurized suits during ascent and reentry. In February 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that NASA had failed to learn lessons from the Challenger disaster, which resulted in the second disaster.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and historically known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west; Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest; the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast; Afghanistan to the east; Pakistan to the southeast; and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a population of over 92 million, Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital and largest city and serves as its primary economic center.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a Pakistani Islamist Jihadist militant organisation driven by a Salafi jihadist ideology. The organisation's primary stated objective is to merge the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan. It also seeks the destruction of India, Hinduism, and Judaism through jihad. It was founded in 1985–1986 by Hafiz Saeed, Zafar Iqbal Shehbaz, Abdullah Azzam and several other Islamist mujahideen with funding from Osama bin Laden during the Soviet–Afghan War. It has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations and numerous other countries and been responsible for terrorist attacks on civilians in India, such as the 2000 Red Fort attack, 2005 Delhi bombings, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam attack.

Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 (GA200/GIA200) was a scheduled domestic passenger flight of a Boeing 737-400 operated by Garuda Indonesia between Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The aircraft overran the runway, crashed into a rice field and burst into flames while landing at Adisucipto International Airport on 7 March 2007. Twenty passengers and one flight attendant were killed. Both pilots survived, and were fired shortly after the accident occurred. It was the fifth hull-loss of a Boeing 737 in Indonesia within less than six months and was the most recent accident with fatalities involving the airline.

On 7 March 2009, two off-duty British soldiers of the 38 Engineer Regiment were shot dead outside Massereene Barracks in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Two other soldiers and two civilian delivery men were also wounded. A dissident Irish republican paramilitary group, the Real IRA, claimed responsibility. The shootings were the first British military fatalities in Northern Ireland since 1997. Two days later the Continuity IRA shot dead Stephen Carroll, a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer; the first police officer to be killed by paramilitaries since 1998.

Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, Finland to the east, and shares a maritime border with Denmark to the south. At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi) and with a population of 10.6 million, Sweden is the largest and most populous Nordic country, and is the fifth-largest country in Europe. Its capital and largest city is Stockholm. The population density is 25.5 inhabitants per square kilometre (66/sq mi), and 88% of Swedes reside in urban areas, mostly in the southern and central portions of the country. Sweden's urban areas together cover 1.5% of its land area. Sweden has a diverse climate owing to the length of the country, which ranges from 55°N to 69°N.