TODAY IN HISTORY
May 15, 1811: Paraguay’s May 14 Revolution, a military coup against Governor Bernardo de Velasco, succeeds in forcing him to create a three man governing junta including himself and two military appointees. The junta was the first in a series of governments that increasingly substituted local rule for colonial control from Spain. Although it was a very long road from here to Paraguay’s formal declaration of independence in 1842, May 14 and 15 are commemorated as Independence Day (well, “days”) in Paraguay today.
May 15, 1940: Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald open a small restaurant called “McDonald’s Bar-B-Que” in San Bernardino, California, serving mostly, as the name says, barbecue. A few years later they streamlined the operation to focus on their most popular item, hamburgers. Since as far as I know there are no McDonald’s Bar-B-Que restaurants in existence anymore, I can only assume that this disruptive change was the death-knell for their company, and it just goes to show you that innovation isn’t always a panacea. That’s today’s business tip.
May 15, 1948: The Arab-Israeli War begins. On a related note this is also “Nakba Day” (Dhikra al-Nakba or “Remembrance of the Catastrophe”), which marks the displacement/expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from the territory of the state of Israel in the period leading up to and during the war.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
Israeli and Lebanese negotiators ended their third session in Washington on Friday with an agreement to extend their ostensible ceasefire for at least another 45 days. Earlier in the day, the Israeli military (IDF) killed at least seven people in multiple attacks across southern Lebanon. As I said, it’s an “ostensible ceasefire.” A Hezbollah strike killed one IDF soldier as well. That makes at least 2951 Lebanese people (per the country’s health ministry) and at least 20 IDF soldiers killed in this conflict since it began on March 2.
