The Russian occupations of Beirut were two separate military actions by squadrons of the Imperial Russian Navy as part of Russia's Levant campaign during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. In July 1770 a Russian fleet established naval command of the Mediterranean at the Battle of Chesma (depicted). In 1772 Russia attempted to assist Egypt's autonomous ruler, Ali Bey al-Kabir, who was in rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. A small Russian squadron helped repel an Ottoman offensive on Sidon, then sailed for Beirut. It bombarded the town and occupied it from 23 to 28 June. In 1773, another Russian squadron accepted an offer by the Druze chieftain Yusuf Shihab to pay the Russians a tribute in exchange for their capturing Beirut. A bombardment of the town began on 2 August, and it surrendered on 10 October. Several hundred Albanian mercenaries were left as occupiers and kept the Russian flag raised over the town until late January or early February 1774.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupations_of_Beirut
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1868:
Red Cloud, a Native American leader of the Oglala Lakota tribe, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, ending Red Cloud's War and establishing the Great Sioux Reservation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_%281868%29
1944:
The B Reactor at the Hanford Site in the U.S. state of Washington began producing plutonium, with the facility later going on to create more for nearly the entire American nuclear arsenal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
2016:
Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces launched a successful military campaign to isolate and eventually capture Raqqa, the Islamic State's capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raqqa_campaign_%282016%E2%80%932017%29
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
sarcophagus: 1. A stone coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture. 2. (by extension) 3. (informal) The cement and steel structure that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. 4. (historical) A type of wine cooler (“a piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled”) shaped like a sarcophagus (sense 1). 5. (obsolete except Ancient Greece, historical) A kind of limestone used by the Ancient Greeks for coffins, so called because it was thought to consume the flesh of corpses. 6. (transitive) To enclose (a corpse, etc.) in a sarcophagus (noun sense 1). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sarcophagus
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. --Zig Ziglar https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zig_Ziglar