PROGRAMMING NOTE: With apologies I must once again forego our usual Wednesday voiceover. I need to preserve what’s left of my voice for podcasting over the next couple of days and then hopefully I can rest it a bit.
TODAY IN HISTORY
March 4, 581: A senior official in the Northern Zhou court named Yang Jian seizes the throne and crowns himself Emperor Wen of the new Sui Dynasty. Yang had been father in-law to Northern Zhou Emperor Xuan, who died young and left his six year old son on the throne as Emperor Jing. Yang’s allies at court engineered his appointment as regent, and after dealing with a rival general, Yuchi Jiong, he did away with the regency and took the throne directly. The Sui’s legacy includes the reunification of China, ending the Northern and Southern Dynasties period and helping to usher in a new era of imperial prosperity that continued into the succeeding Tang Dynasty.
March 4, 1493: Christopher Columbus and his crew aboard the Niña arrive at the port of Lisbon, Portugal, on their return from his first voyage to the lands soon to be known as the Americas. After navigating some legal hot water over interpretations of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which divided the Atlantic into Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence, Columbus returned to Spain, convinced he’d charted a western route to Asia. He was slightly off, but to be fair they eventually figured that out.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 11 people in Lebanon on Wednesday after striking multiple targets including a Beirut hotel and a residential complex in the eastern part of the country. The IDF has killed more than 50 people since beginning major operations in Lebanon on Monday. It’s displaced somewhere around 65,000, though that number is likely to go up very quickly after Israeli officials issued evacuation orders for “dozens” of villages near the Lebanese-Israeli border on Wednesday. They’re advising residents to relocate all the way north of the Litani River. This could indicate that the IDF is planning to expand its ground occupation of southern Lebanon though that remains to be seen.
