Israel launched Operation Spring of Youth on Palestinian Liberation Organization targets in Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon. Over 50 PLO operatives were killed to the loss of two Israeli commandos.
Shipboard Israeli commandos during the operation. By ניר מאור מוזיאון ההעפלה וחיל הים - ניר מאור מוזיאון ההעפלה וחיל הים, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43634278
The operation was part of the ongoing retaliation for the attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
The United Nations Organization for African Unity conference on Southern Africa opened in Oslo, Norway, which is not anywhere near Southern Africa. Norway was hosting the event.
As part of the Nixon effort to combat inflation, grocery stores were required to post signs at their meat counters listing the limit for prices per pound for meat.
It's interesting to note that among the very first politicians, and indeed the first "local" politician, to hit the streets in Beirut was. . . Emmanuel Macron, the President of France.
He received nearly universal praise from the Lebanese, something he doesn't receive in France.
While there, he called for a new French relationship with its former colony, and for reforms in Lebanon, all of which was well received by the Lebanese.
And hence the strange relationship between France, which sees Lebanon as an extension of itself somehow, and Lebanon, which looks upon is former colonial rulers in ways that often express more admiration than it gives itself locally.
Yesterday, tragedy struck Beirut, Lebanon, a city that's had more than its fair share of misery.
As has been reported, the explosion was caused by a fire that spread and detonated a very large quantity of nitrate fertilizer stored at a warehouse on the docks. The explosion was of a gigantic magnitude. So large, in fact, that some Lebanese authorities at first wondered if they'd been hit by an atomic device. That speculation, ironically enough, was strangely timely, as today is the 75th anniversary of the American use of an atomic device on Hiroshima.
So how does this historic event compare to other such blasts?
Should we even make that comparison for that matter? Well, we will, simply because perhaps such things are important to know.
As big as the blast was, and it was really huge, it still doesn't replace the accidental blast that's oddly analogous that occured at Halifax on December 6, 1917. We marked the centennial of that tragedy here:
Halifax was a 2.9 kiloton explosion. Absolutely massive, and actually now larger than the lowest low yield atomic weapons in terms of their potential, but thankfully unexploited, yields.
In contrast, the Beirut blast seems to be about 2.04 kt. Massive, but still 1/3d less than the huge Halifax detonation. Still, that yield is below the lowest, low yield nuclear weapons, although weapons in that class could legitimately be regarded as extremely low yield, in context.
Indeed, that's what makes them dangerous. As big as the Beirut explosion was, it so far below Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which we'll mention below, that there's no comparison. That fact is what might tempt the use of a very low yield nuclear weapon. . .which might provoke use of higher yield ones.
Hiroshima's mushroom cloud taken some minutes later and from a distance of six miles.
Hiroshima, whose 75th anniversary is today, was a 15kt atomic bomb.
Imagine that. It was seven times as powerful as the blast in Beirut earlier this week.
