TODAY IN HISTORY
May 4, 1799: The British East India Company and its allies capture the fortress of Seringapatam in the southern Indian sultanate of Mysore, ending a one month siege and along with it the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and, indeed, the Anglo-Mysore Wars as a whole. The ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, had been a perpetual thorn in the EIC’s side, having risen to the throne during the Second Anglo-Mysore War and having led the kingdom into the Third Anglo-Mysore War. He was killed at Seringapatam and his kingdom was mostly absorbed by the EIC and its allies, the Maratha Empire and Hyderabad.
May 4, 1904: The United States assumes ownership of a nearly defunct French project to build a canal across Panama connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was just a few months after Panama’s US-backed declaration of independence from Colombia, which the Roosevelt administration encouraged because the Colombian Congress wouldn’t ratify the treaty leasing the canal zone to the US. The project was completed in 1914 and it’s fair to say it was kind of a big deal.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The New Arab is reporting that “clashes” broke out between Syrian Interior Ministry security forces and the Druze “National Guard” militia on Monday morning in southern Syria’s Suwayda province. According to its account the fighting began with attacks on several security posts and escalated from there to include mortar fire at least by the ministry forces. There’s nothing in this report about casualties but that may be due more to a dearth of information than anything else.
