Which came first, McDonald's or Pakistan?

McDonald's came first, by 7 years. Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino.

Side by side

McDonald's

The brothers opened in 1940 as a barbecue drive-in and reinvented it in 1948 with the Speedee Service System — a tiny menu, no waiters, food assembled on a production line. The company itself dates its founding to 15 April 1955, when Ray Kroc opened his franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Both dates are defensible and the corporate one is not the restaurant one.

Pakistan

Pakistan and India were created by the same act of parliament, but Mountbatten had to attend both ceremonies, so he took the Pakistani one in Karachi on 14 August and the Indian one in Delhi on the 15th. Pakistan is therefore one day older than India in the sense the question means. Independence in both cases took effect at the same instant: midnight between the two dates.