World roundup: May 6 2026
Stories from Iran, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
May 6, 1527: A group of around 20,000 Habsburg soldiers and mercenaries, who were mutinying over not being paid, sack the city of Rome and besiege Pope Clement VII in the Castel Sant’Angelo. The city was heavily looted, and Clement was only released after agreeing to pay a ransom. Some art historians consider the sack and the devastation it entailed to mark the end of the Italian High Renaissance. It definitely marked a shift in the Catholic world. Clement and the papacy were badly weakened, and although Habsburg Emperor Charles V may have been a little embarrassed about how it happened he was happy to take advantage, and so power shifted away from the popes and toward the emperors. Among other things this meant that the Church did not pursue the Crusade against Protestantism that Clement had favored, which helped to solidify the Reformation.
May 6, 1954: British runner Roger Bannister becomes the first person to verifiably run a mile in under four minutes. That’s cool. I run a three minute mile myself, but four is really nice. Bannister’s time of 3:59.4 obviously stood as the world record, but only for about six weeks before it was broken on June 21 by Australian runner John Landy’s 3:58 mile.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 13 people in multiple strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon on Wednesday. That’s not including any casualties from the IDF’s attack on southern Beirut’s Dahieh suburb, which reportedly killed the operations leader of Hezbollah’s Radwan special operations unit, Malek Ballout. There’s no word yet as to additional casualties in that strike but given the extent of the damage apparent in photos of its aftermath it seems reasonable to assume that Ballout was not the only person affected. This is the first Israeli attack on Beirut since the start of the current “ceasefire.”
