On 18 October 1973, a woman hijacked a Paris to Nice flight and demanded that a French comedy film be pulled from cinemas. The film in question, Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob, was a warm-hearted farce about tolerance starring Louis de Funès. The hijacker believed it was too pro-Jewish given the Yom Kippur War raging in the Middle East. The hijacking was resolved peacefully, the film was released anyway, and it became one of the biggest box office successes of 1973 in France. Also on this date: in 1565, the first naval battle between Japan and a Western power took place off Kyushu when the Matsura clan attacked a Portuguese carrack; in 1009, the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, hacking it down to bedrock; and in 1945, Argentine colonel Juan Perón married actress Eva Duarte, who would go on to become one of the most influential and polarising figures in Latin American history. Four stories of human certainty meeting historical reality.
