Operation PBFortune was a covert United States operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz (pictured) in 1952. The operation was planned by the Central Intelligence Agency and authorized by President Harry Truman. It was motivated by US fears that Árbenz was being influenced by communists, and lobbied for by the United Fruit Company. The operation was planned with the support of Anastasio Somoza García, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the dictators of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, respectively. The plan involved providing weapons to the exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua. US secretary of state Dean Acheson became concerned that the coup attempt would damage the image of the US and terminated the operation. Two years later, another covert CIA action, Operation PBSuccess, toppled the Árbenz government and ended the Guatemalan Revolution.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBFortune
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1928:
The first three of more than sixty nations signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand_Pact
1964:
South Vietnamese junta leader Nguyễn Khánh entered into a triumvirate power-sharing arrangement with rival generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Dương Văn Minh, who had both been involved in plots to unseat Khánh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C6%B0%C6%A1ng_V%C4%83n_Minh
1990:
American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of the most influential guitarists in the revival of blues in the 1980s, was killed in a helicopter crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Stevie_Ray_Vaughan
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
as ever trod shoe-leather: (idiomatic, archaic) As ever existed or lived. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/as_ever_trod_shoe-leather
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, "Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please." You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. And this is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact, and equality as a result. --Lyndon B. Johnson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson