1932Naval officers kill Japan’s prime minister
On the evening of 15 May 1932, a band of young naval officers, helped by army cadets and civilian ultranationalists, forced their way into the official residence of Japan’s prime minister, Inukai Tsuyoshi, in Tokyo and shot him. Inukai, aged 76, had tried to rein in the army after its seizure of Manchuria. Other groups attacked a bank, a power station and party offices in the same night.
The plotters hoped to force martial law and a military government, and in that they failed. Yet the incident still changed Japan. Inukai’s death ended the era of party cabinets, as the army made clear it would not accept another, and an admiral, Saito Makoto, took over. The attackers received light sentences after a wave of public sympathy, a sign of how far militarism had spread.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Japan, the rise of the militarists ↗
1891Pope Leo XIII speaks up for working people
On 15 May 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum novarum, an open letter to the Catholic bishops of the world on the condition of the working classes. Written as factories and cities swelled across Europe and the Americas, it asked what the Church should say about low pay, long hours and the gulf between owners and labourers.
The encyclical rejected socialism and defended private property, but it also insisted that workers deserved a wage fit to live on, reasonable hours and the right to form their own associations. Employers and the state, it argued, both had duties towards labour. Rerum novarum became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching, and later popes marked its anniversaries with letters of their own.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Rerum novarum ↗
1972Okinawa returns to Japan
At midnight on 15 May 1972, Okinawa passed back from American to Japanese administration, 27 years after United States forces had taken the island in one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. Since then the Ryukyu Islands had been run by an American civil administration, with their own currency, the dollar, and passports needed for travel to mainland Japan.
The handover followed years of campaigning by Okinawans and talks between Tokyo and Washington, agreed in principle in 1969 and settled by treaty in 1971. Okinawa became a Japanese prefecture once more and the yen replaced the dollar. The large American bases stayed, however, and their place on the island has remained a source of debate ever since.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Okinawa ↗
1940Two brothers open the first McDonald’s
On 15 May 1940, the brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened McDonald’s Bar-B-Q, a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California. It was a typical roadside business of its day, with carhops bringing food to customers in their parked cars and a long menu built around barbecue.
In 1948 the brothers noticed that most of their takings came from hamburgers. They closed, cut the menu, dropped the carhops and reopened with a kitchen run like an assembly line, which they called the Speedee Service System. A milkshake-mixer salesman, Ray Kroc, later began franchising their idea and bought the brothers out in 1961, turning one drive-in into a worldwide chain.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress, Inside Adams: McDonald’s Bar-B-Que? ↗
