Syria Attacks Lebanon (1989)

Today's Golden Oldie is from August 17, 1989

Twenty years ago this month, Syrian artillery pounded Beirut and the world looked the other way. Beirut soon began to look like a ghost town as thousands fled the country by sea to Cyprus.

* * * The shot heard round the world:

"The "Shot heard 'round the world" is a phrase that has come to represent several historical incidents throughout world history. The line is originally from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (1837), and referred to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Later, in Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, the phrase became synonymous with the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and plunged Europe into World War I." -more