ARAM YERGANIAN

A plan to massacre the Armenians of the provinces of Nukhi, Aresh, Shamakh, and Baku was prepared at a secret meeting of the government of Azerbaijan and the leaders of the ruling right-wing Musavat Party. Before the massacres, a secret order sent by Behbut Khan Jivanshir, Azerbaijani Interior Minister, to the mayors of Nukhi, Shamakh, and Baku, instructed: “It is necessary to exterminate the Armenians to achieve our goals crossing over their corpses. Do not spare anyone and execute faithfully the orders given to you.”

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BIRTH OF ARAM KHATCHATURIAN

Forty-four years after his death, Aram Khachaturian remains the most widely known Armenian classical composer of all times. His “Sabre Dance,” the electrifying dance of the final act of the ballet “Gayane,” made him known on a popular level worldwide.

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BIRTH OF TRO

Tro (Trasdamad Ganayan) was a freedom fighter, a military leader of the first Republic of Armenia, and a political activist in the Diaspora. He was born in the town of Igdir, in the province of Surmalu (Eastern Armenia, then part of the Russian Empire).

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OPENING OF THE MONUMENT OF SARTARABAD

Sartarabad, located 25 miles to the west of Yerevan, became the last Armenian stance against the advance of the invading Third Ottoman Army in May 1918. A defeat would not only open the door for their penetration to the rest of Eastern Armenia, but also the follow-up to the genocide of 1915-1916.

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DEATH OF SIMON VRATSIAN

The last Prime Minister of the first Republic of Armenia, Simon Vratsian, was born in 1882, in the village of Medz Sala, near Nakhichevan-on-the-Don (today Rostov-on Don, in the northern Caucasus).

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Death of Keri

Keri, a veteran leader of the Armenian liberation movement at the turn of the twentieth century, became also a prominent military figure in the last years of his life. He was born Arshag Kavafian in 1858 in Erzerum, and was twenty-four when he entered the short lived self-defense organization “Defender of the Homeland,” founded in 1882.

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LIBERATION OF SHUSHI

Shushi had historically been the capital of Karabagh and the third most important Armenian cultural center in the Southern Caucasus (after Tiflis and Baku) until 1920, when the pogrom executed by Azerbaijani forces ended in the destruction of the Armenian quarters and the extermination of the Armenian population of the city.

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HOVHANNES SHIRAZ

Poet Hovhannes Shiraz, one of the most popular names in Armenia and the Diaspora during Soviet times, was born in Alexandropol (later Leninakan, now Gumri), in 1915. His birth name was Onnig Garabedian. At the age of five, he lost his father, who was killed in the Turkish invasion of Armenia that followed the Armenian-Turkish war of 1920.

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BIRTH OF HENRY MORGENTHAU, SR.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., was the Ambassador of the United States to the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Mannheim (Germany) on April 26, 1856.

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BATTLE OF ARTZNI

The Arab rule lasted for almost two and half centuries (640-886) in Armenia. Their domination was heavy handed, and time after time, the Armenian nobility rebelled against oppression and excessive taxes. As it had happened under Persian rule, several of those rebellions were headed by the Mamikonian princes.

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