World roundup: October 21 2024

Stories from Lebanon, India, Brazil, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

October 21, 1600: Tokugawa Ieyasu’s army defeats the “Western Army” of Ishida Mitsunari at the Battle of Sekigahara. The victory left Ieyasu in virtually uncontested control of Japan and is generally marked as the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, even though Ieyasu wasn’t officially appointed shōgun until 1603.

October 21, 1805: Though outnumbered, a British Royal Navy fleet under Horatio Nelson (who was killed in action) decisively defeats a combined Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, near Cape Trafalgar in southern Spain. Britain had established naval supremacy over France years earlier through engagements like the 1798 Battle of the Nile. Trafalgar confirmed that naval supremacy and was the last major naval engagement of the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon’s plan to build a great new navy that would finally defeat Britain’s was derailed by his defeat on land years later.

British painter Samuel Drummond’s The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 (Wikimedia Commons)

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Al Jazeera is reporting that the Israeli military (IDF) has killed at least 640 people in the 17 days since it began its new offensive in northern Gaza. Reporter Tarez Abu Azzoum describes residents as “trapped” while “food, water, and medicine have run out.” People attempting to evacuate the area—obeying the IDF’s orders—are reportedly doing so under fire, and women who have managed to evacuate report that Israeli soldiers are detaining men at checkpoints and arresting them. Or at least the assumption is that those men are being arrested (the alternative is worse). Contrary to claims that have been made by the Israeli and US governments in recent days, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said on Monday that the IDF is still blocking humanitarian aid from getting to much of northern Gaza.