This Week in History and its Irrelevance to Today According to the historian Josephus, on April 14, 73 A.D., the remaining holdouts in the fortress of Masada in Israel committed mass suicide, ending a long seige by the Roman Tenth Legion. 1931 Years later... Muqtada Al Sadr and his followers are holed up in the Shi'a holy city of Najaf surrounding by 2,500 American soldiers. Damn, that is not irrelevant at all is it?