Sundown today is the beginning of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day of mourning
for the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem (583
BCE by the Babylonians, and 70 CE by the Romans, respectively). The day
also commemorates the failed Simon Bar Kochba uprising against the
Romans in 132 CE - in which the Roman historian Cassius Dio reports that
580,000 Jews were massacred.
(The apocalyptic significance of the
Temple is that, in the view of apocalypse-looking Christians, its restoration would
trigger the end times.)
