In 1981 Israel bombed Iraq’s first nuclear reactor, months before completion.

Iraq bought the Osiris class reactor from France which they maintain had many safeguards in place to ensure that the reactor would not be able to make nuclear weapons grade material. Iraq had also signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allowed for on going inspections of the facility by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and their safeguards.

On this day in 1981 Israel bombed the reactor in Operation Opera claiming that the reactor could have been used to produce nuclear weapons and thus posed a threat to their national security. The attack of the reactor was condemned around the world when Israel reported the strike the following day. French technicians assured the world that no nuclear material was as yet in the facility and so the strike posed no threat of nuclear contamination to Iraq’s capital city of Bagdad, which is just 10 miles from the site, but ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian was killed in the strike.

Israel refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and just seven years later a former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, leaked that Israel themselves were building nuclear weapons, although this has never been officially confirmed by Israel’s government they did confirm that they have the capability.

In 1982 British born US physicist, Richard Wilson, inspected the remains of the site and concluded that the reactor would be completely inefficient to producing nuclear weapons grade material.

In 1893 Mohandas Ghandi experiences an event that would define his life in his first act of civil disobedience.

In 1888 Ghandi travelled to England to train as a lawyer aged 19. Shortly after aged 24 he took on his first role as a legal representative for impoverished Indians in South Africa.  At the time Indians were subject to the same restrictions as the black majority in South Africa including segregation and restricted from voting. The restrictions also prohibited him from travelling on a first class train carriage which Ghandi ignored. When he was discovered travelling in the carriage he was ordered to move and make room for white European travellers that may wish to use it. Ghandi refused and further along the journey he was beaten for his defiance. This event changed his life and Ghandi remained in South Africa for another 23 years, attempting to improve the rights of non Europeans. He would later return to his home land of India and start the nationalist movement their which would eventually result in India’s independence from the United Kingdom.