Today in Iran, Majid Jamali Fashi was hanged for murdering nuclear scientist Masoud Alimohammadi — allegedly at the behest of Israeli intelligence.

Alimohammadi, a Tehran University physics professor, was slain in January 2010 by a booby-trapped motorcycle parked next to his car just as he left for work in the morning.

It’s one of a whole pattern of “events that happen unnaturally” befalling Iranian scientists — events whose rather self-evident foreign sponsorship is supposed to be bracketed as “alleged” and definitely not described as “terrorism”.

Whether that’s specifically true in Alimohammadi’s case is arguably a bit harder to judge, since he was not directly involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s western opponents have speculated that Tehran itself murdered him because he was a (low-key) supporter of the country’s opposition who in death could serve as an official martyr.

That would be awfully convenient: official martyrs come cheap but Iran doesn’t exactly have a limitless supply of particle physicists.

Accurately or not, Fashi confessed to carrying out Alimohammadi’s assassination, claiming that he was recruited, paid, and trained by the Mossad for the job.

On this day..

• 1920: Four denunciators of Laon
• 1903: Victoriano Lorenzo, cholo
• 1863: Zygmunt Padlewski, January Uprising rebel
• Daily Double: Hameln after the war
• 1946: Ten at Hameln for killing Allied POWs
• 1815: William Sawyer, guns and roses
• 1945: George Green, Jr.
• 1702: Dick Bauf, executioner of his parents
• 1863: William Francis Corbin and Thomas Jefferson McGraw
• 1976: Lt. Col. Bukar Dimka and six coup confederates
• 71 B.C.E.: The followers of Spartacus
• 1381: Eppelein von Gailingen
• 1916: Jesse Washington lynched after conviction