This Day in History: Austrian composer Joseph Haydn died on this day in 1809. Known as the "Father of the Symphony" he was a friend and mentor of Mozart and a tutor to Beethoven. However, Haydn's story didn't end with his death. Much like Rene Descartes, his remains were quite active. After his death, graverobbers removed Haydn's skull so they could study it. More than ten years later, Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy II, decided to give Haydn a proper burial. During the exhumation it was discovered that the head was missing (his wig however was still there). An investigation ensued and a skull was returned to his grave. It was however the wrong skull. The people who produced the skull actually kept Haydn's skull in a special box, a box that was discovered 145 years later. That skull was reunited with the rest of the composer's bones. They didn't know what to do with the other skull so to this day Joseph Haydn's grave is buried with two skulls.
Several large chunks of Beethoven's skull were also stolen, and are presently in California. See the book, Beethoven's Hair for more.
Though buried in a pauper's grave, what is believed to be Mozart's skull was actually on display for a while 100 years ago in Salzburg, Austria.
This Day in History: Pearl Hart, a Canadian born female outlaw of the Old West, robbed a stage coach 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona on this day (May 30) in 1899. This was the last recorded stagecoach robbery and the only one in my memory committed by a woman.
Hart and a friend named Joe Boot decided to rob a stagecoach that traveled between Globe and Florence, Arizona. The robbery occurred at a watering point near Cane Springs Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Globe. Hart had cut her hair short and dressed in men's clothing. Hart was armed with a .38 revolver while Boot had a Colt .45. One of the last stagecoach routes still operating in the territory, the run had not been robbed in several years and thus the coach did not have a shotgun messenger. The pair stopped the coach and Boot held a gun on the robbery victims while Hart took $431.20 (equivalent to $14,045 in 2021) and two firearms from the passengers. After returning $1 to each passenger, she then took the driver's revolver. After the robbers had galloped away on their horses, the driver unhitched one of the horses and headed back to town to alert the sheriff.
A posse led by Sheriff Truman of Pinal County caught up with the pair on June 5, 1899. Finding both of them asleep, Sheriff Truman reported that Boot surrendered quietly while Hart fought to avoid capture.
Other known female outlaws of the old west are Laura Bullion, a.k.a. the Rose of the Wild Bunch, Belle Siddons, a.k.a. Madam Vestal, Rose Dunn, a.k.a. Rose of the Cimarron, Sarah Jane Newman, a.k.a. Sally Scull, Mary Katherine Haroney, a.k.a. Big Nose Kate, Belle Starr, Etta Place, Eleanor Dumont, a.k.a. Madame Mustache
and Bonnie Parker.
There was even a serial killer in 19th century America named Belle Gunness, who may have been responsible for forty murders.
This Day in History: Randy Llanes, 47, a fisherman from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, was killed by a swordfish on this day (May 29) in 2015. Llanes had harpooned the fish and jumped into the water to retrieve it, but the swordfish impaled him in the chest.
Another man, Franklin D. Langsford of Lanesville, MA, was killed by a swordfish in 1886. "When near the fish, but too far away to reach it with the lance, the fish quickly turned and rushed under the boat, thrusting its sword up through the bottom of the boat twenty-three inches. As the fish turned, the line was suddenly slacked, causing the captain to fall backward, and while he was down, the sword came piercing through the boat and into his body." Source
A scuba diver in Brazil in 2016 was attacked by a swordfish. "This scuba diver can count himself as incredibly lucky, after a swordfish charged at him and speared through his diving equipment, missing his body by inches." Source
This Day in History: German automaker Volkswagen was founded on this day (May 28) in 1937 by the German Labor Front, a Nazi labor union. In the early 1930s cars were a luxury: most Germans could afford nothing more elaborate than a motorcycle. Only one German out of 50 owned a car, so the VW project was set up so that regular Germans could afford one. Today, VW's biggest market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits.
The German term Volk translates to "people", thus Volkswagen translates to "people's car".
When the VW Beetle was introduced in the States in 1949 only two were sold in the first year.
"The Beetle with the license plate “LMW 28IF” on the cover of The Beatles' Abbey Road album was sold at an auction for $23,000 in 1986. It is now on display at Volkswagen's AutoMuseum at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany...In the original Transformers cartoon, Bumblebee transformed from a VW Bug. The car was changed to a Camaro for the live-action movies." Source
"Contrary to media reports, VW isn’t bringing back the Microbus – just as it never brought back the Beetle, either. It did bring back a car that looked like the Beetle, back in the late’ 90s. But that’s about all it had in common with the Beetle people remembered from the ‘70s, which was the last time VW sold the real – as opposed to “new” – Beetle here in the U.S. (VW was able to continue selling the real Beetle for another 30 years in Mexico, where people were freer to buy the kinds of cars they wanted to buy – as opposed to here, where people are free to buy the cars government allows them to buy.) The car that looked like a Beetle but which was really a re-bodied Golf sold ok at first and then not so well, after awhile." Source
This Day in History: The Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T and began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A on this day (May 27) in 1927. The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relatively low price was partly the result of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual handcrafting. The Model T was colloquially known as the "Tin Lizzie," "Leaping Lena" or "flivver".
The Ford Model T was named the most influential car of the 20th century in the 1999 Car of the Century competition, ahead of the BMC Mini, Citroën DS, and Volkswagen Beetle. Ford's Model T was successful not only because it provided inexpensive transportation on a massive scale, but also because the car signified innovation for the rising middle class and became a powerful symbol of the United States' age of modernization. With 15 million sold, it was the most sold car in history before being surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972, and still stood eighth on the top-ten list, as of 2012.
By 1918, half of all the cars in the U.S. were Model Ts. In his autobiography, Ford reported that in 1909 he told his management team, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
This day in history: Dracula was published on this day in 1897. The novel did not make much money for the author, Bram Stoker, who eventually went broke just before he died. The movies are what really made Dracula a star. He has appeared in more films than any other horror character—over 200 and counting—and that number doesn't even include comedies and cartoons.
Bram Stoker started writing Dracula right after the Jack the Ripper killings, but it may also have been influenced by a Romanian prince named Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, who was known for skewering his enemies. The working title of the novel was The Dead Undead, which was later shortened to The Undead. Right before the book was published, Stoker changed the title to Dracula.
This Day in History: English novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton was born on this day in 1803. Bulwer-Lytton's works sold and paid him well. He coined famous phrases like "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "dweller on the threshold". But, his most famous line was from "Paul Clifford" whose opening phrase was, "It was a dark and stormy night."
The entire opening goes like this: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
"It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose.
The sentence is "filled with melodrama (a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization). It’s also become the archetypical Victorian-era trope (a convention or device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in a creative work)." Source
Edgar Allan Poe got in on the fun as well in his 1832 short story “The Bargain Lost,”:
"It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces."
There is actually a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually, that claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels."
If you delve further in the "Paul Clifford" novel, you will stumble upon this line as well: “This made the scene,—save that on a chair by the bedside lay a profusion of long, glossy, golden ringlets, which had been cut from the head of the sufferer when the fever had begun to mount upwards, but which, with a jealousy that portrayed the darling littleness of a vain heart, she had seized and insisted on retaining near her; and save that, by the fire, perfectly inattentive to the event about to take place within the chamber, and to which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses.”
This Day in History: Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland on this day in 1844, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.
Thus was born one of the dominant methods of communication over long distances that would continue to be used for well over a century. Telegraphs aided in saving lives as well:
"On April 15, 1912, telegrapher John G. Phillips sent out the following Morse code message: 'CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD DE MGY MGY.' CQD stands for 'Come Quick Disaster' and SOS stands for 'Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls.' And DE MGY stands for 'from the RMS Titanic.'
We are all familiar with the fate of the RMS Titanic, but many of us fail to recognize that this Morse code message (and the other messages sent as soon as the ship struck an iceberg) is what led to the rescue of more than 700 passengers." Source
"At one point in the 1920s, Western Union and its army of uniformed messengers were sending more than 200 million telegrams every year. But the advent of faxes, then emails and finally SMS messaging saw the numbers dwindle, bringing to an end the golden age of the telegram." Source
This Day in History: American engineering physicist and pioneer of electronic music Robert Moog was born on this day in 1934. He was the founder of Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964. This was followed in 1970 by a more portable model, the Minimoog, described as the most famous and influential synthesizer in history.
The Moog synthesizer was brought to the mainstream by Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos. In the late 1960s, it was adopted by rock and pop acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. At its height of popularity, it was a staple of 1970s progressive rock, used by acts including Yes, Tangerine Dream, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, it threatened the jobs of session musicians, and was banned from use in commercial work for a period, and in some places, the ban is still in effect.
Back in 2016, Kraftwerk had to cancel their shows in Buenos Aires because of a city-wide ban on synthesizer-based performances.
Some of the most popular songs featuring synthesizers are:
This Day in History: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society on this day in 1964. Johnson declared war on poverty, jacked up federal spending on education, and pushed massive new entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which promised to deliver high-quality, low-cost health care to the nation's elderly and poor.
"..if we judge the Great Society by its goal, providing the poor with their basic family needs so they can go out into the marketplace and find jobs and join their fellow Americans, it has been, writes Rector, 'a catastrophe.' Scores of millions of Americans are today less able to achieve self-sufficiency through work than were their grandparents. And by providing for all the needs that the father used to provide for his family, the Great Society has helped make fathers superfluous. We have created a system where a teenage girl who becomes pregnant can have all her basic needs met by government. This is a primary cause of the rise in illegitimacy in America from 6 percent of all births in 1963 to 41 percent today, and to 53 percent among Hispanics and 73 percent among African-Americans. And that record illegitimacy rate is directly tied to the drug use rate, the dropout rate, the crime rate and the incarceration rate. If the goal of the Great Society was to turn America’s tax consumers into taxpayers, it has been a total failure. We have now a vast underclass of scores of millions who are dependent upon government for most or all of their basic needs, a class among whom many, if not most, have lost the ability to survive without government money, food and shelter." Source
Even FDR, 30 years prior warned that welfare is “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
This Day in History: The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opened on this day in 2005 at Six Flags in Jackson Township, New Jersey. This roller coaster reaches 456 feet and accelerates at speeds of 128 miles per hour in only 3.5 seconds, it was designed to be one of the world’s most dangerous roller coasters.
The oldest roller coasters are believed to have originated from the so-called "Russian Mountains", specially constructed hills of ice located in the area that is now Saint Petersburg, Russia. Built in the 17th century, the slides were built to a height of between 70 and 80 feet, had a 50-degree drop, and were reinforced by wooden supports. Later, in 1784, Catherine the Great is said to have constructed a sledding hill in the gardens of her palace at Oranienbaum in St. Petersburg.
The first modern roller coaster, the Promenades Aériennes, opened in Parc Beaujon in Paris on July 8, 1817. It featured wheeled cars securely locked to the track, guide rails to keep them on course, and higher speeds. It spawned half a dozen imitators, but their popularity soon declined.
However, during the Belle Epoque they returned to fashion. In 1887, Spanish entrepreneur Joseph Oller, co-founder of the Moulin Rouge music hall, constructed the Montagnes Russes de Belleville, "Russian Mountains of Belleville" with 656 feet of track laid out in a double-eight, later enlarged to four figure-eight-shaped loops.
Between 1994 and 2004 22 people were killed on American roller coasters.
This Day in History: The Buddy Holly Story starring Gary Busey opened on this day in 1978. It's a great movie that still holds up. Busey actually sang his own songs here and Rollingstone picked this movie as one of the ten best Rock biopics of all time. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The heart and soul and power of 'The Buddy Holly Story' is the uncanny, marrow-deep, robust, exhilarating, likable, superlative, overwhelmingly convincing portrayal by Gary Busey ... For once there is no lip-synching to someone else's voice, no feigning with the fingers to somebody else's strumming. Busey does it all himself, and it is one of those rare and stunning performances in which the person of the actor himself is totally lost to sight in his creation of someone else."
Other top tock biopics according to Rollingstone are: The Doors, Ray, Walk the Line and 'What's Love Got to Do With It'
This Day in History: Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade/celsius temperature scale on this day (May 19) in 1743. Or, more accurately, he reversed the temperature scale developed by Anders Celsius. Since 1743 the Celsius scale has been based on 0 °C for the freezing point of water and 100 °C for the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure. Prior to 1743 the values were reversed (i.e. the boiling point was 0 degrees and the freezing point was 100 degrees). The 1743 scale reversal was proposed by Jean-Pierre Christin.
The boiling point of water are no longer part of the definition of the Celsius scale. In 1948, the definition was changed to use the triple point of water. The point where liquid become stable is called the triple point, where all three phases (solid, liquid and gas) are all in equilibrium.
The Fahrenheit scale is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). Historically, on the Fahrenheit scale the melting point of water was 32°F and the boiling point was 212°F (at standard atmospheric pressure). This put the boiling and freezing points of water 180 degrees apart.
The Fahrenheit scale was the primary temperature standard for climatic, industrial and medical purposes in English-speaking countries until the 1960s. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Celsius scale replaced Fahrenheit in almost all of those countries—with the notable exception of the United States and in certain cases, the United Kingdom—typically during their general metrication process.
Fahrenheit is used in the United States, its territories and associated states (all served by the U.S. National Weather Service), as well as the Cayman Islands and Liberia for everyday applications. For example, U.S. weather forecasts, food cooking, and freezing temperatures are typically given in degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists, including meteorologists, use degrees Celsius or kelvin in all countries.
The formula to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit is [°F] = [°C] × 9/5 + 32. For instance, take 20 degrees Celsius, multiply it by 9, divide it by 5 and add 32, and you get 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Fahrenheit and Celsius scales have one point at which they intersect. They are equal at -40 °C and -40 °F.
This Day in History: American inventor and firearms designer Daniel B. Wesson was born on this day in 1825. He helped develop several influential firearm designs over the course of his life; he and Horace Smith were the co-founders of two companies named "Smith & Wesson", the first of which was eventually reorganized into the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and the latter of which became the modern Smith & Wesson.
Smith & Wesson still makes popular handguns. "The M&P Shield by Smith & Wesson was released in 2012 and still holds many top spots today. When it was first introduced, the company claimed is was the best-selling on the market for personal protection and that’s what millions of people use it for today. There are three options of the .45, .40, and 9mm, so you can choose an M&P Shield to suit." Source
One of the most popular S&W guns was the S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum famously called "the most powerful handgun in the world" by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.
This Day in History: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's marriage is annulled on this day in 1536. Why is this important? Henry VIII was previously married to Catherine of Aragon, but she was unable to bare him a child. Hank then wanted a second wife because he needed an heir, but the Pope refused his request for a divorce/annulment. Henry then said "screw you" to the Pope, and declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England (thereby rejecting the Pope's authority).
Thus, Protestantism and the Reformation was officially started and sanctioned in England, and Catholicism started to lose control over the Western world.
Was Henry VIII a Protestant? "No way! He killed Protestants who threatened the Roman Catholic air he breathed. Up until the very end of his life he resisted the Reformation’s central idea of justification by grace through faith alone, and with the help of Cardinal Wolsey and others, ordered the burning of Martin Luther’s writings, and imprisoned and killed his followers. Historian Alec Ryrie must have been right when he wrote that Henry’s reforms look more like 'Catholicism without the pope' than 'Lutheranism without justification by faith...Henry’s middle ground was in many ways a political Reformation of convenience, and he clearly did not intend his heirs to embrace Protestantism. Nevertheless, his actions helped make a way for this outcome. '” Source
Oh, and Henry VIII didn't behead all of his 6 wives, only 2. He divorced the other 2 and one died of blood poisoning. To help you remember, there's a little poem that explains what happened to his wives in chronological order: "Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived..."
This Day in History: On this day (May 16) in 1977, "a rotor blade broke off a helicopter on the roof of Manhattan’s Pan Am Building after the copter’s landing gear failed, causing it to turn sideways. The blade killed five people. The New York Times reported: 'Whirling like a giant boomerang, the blade struck four people on the roof-top madding pad, killing three instantly, then plunged over the skyscraper’s west parapet. About halfway down the gray tower, the blade crashed into a window and broke in two. One piece of the blade continued to fall, whirling onto Madison Avenue and killing a woman.'” Source
Perhaps the most well-known helicopter accident happened on the set of the Twilight Zone movie. In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, actors Vic Morrow and seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California, in an area that was known as Indian Dunes, near Santa Clarita. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions reportedly delaminated the rotor blades and caused the helicopter to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Le were decapitated and mutilated by the helicopter rotor blades, while Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut.
More recently, basketball great Kobe Bryant and 8 other passengers including his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash in 2020 while flying in heavy fog. Safety experts say that despite the publicity that such accidents draw, helicopter transportation has a good safety record, better than that of small private planes.
This Day in History: The city of Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded on this day in 1905. Here are some fun facts about Vegas:
Vegas has 41 million visitors a year.
It would take you 288 years to spend one night in every hotel room in the city.
Las Vegas has more unlisted phone numbers than any other city in the United States.
Nevada law states that slot machines must pay back a minimum of 75 percent of the money deposited on average. It's 83 percent in Atlantic City.
10,000 couples are married in Las Vegas every month. It takes 10 minutes to get a marriage license in Vegas.
The Eiffel Tower in Vegas was originally planned to be full size, but it was too close to the airport for that. The Sphinx however is larger than the original Sphinx in Egypt.
The Bellagio has more rooms than the number of residents in the city of Bellagio, Italy.
"In the 1950s and early 1960s, Las Vegas was known for putting on a different type of show. At the Nevada Test Site, just 65 miles northwest of the city, the U.S. Department of Energy would test nuclear devices. Las Vegas’ Chamber of Commerce saw a moneymaking opportunity, and decided to distribute calendars advertising detonation times and choice viewing locations." Source
In the early days of FedEx, its founder, Frederick W. Smith. had to go to great lengths to keep the company afloat. In one instance, after a crucial business loan was denied, he took the company's last $5,000 to Las Vegas and won $32,000 gambling on blackjack to cover the company's $24,000 fuel bill. It kept FedEx alive for the time being.
The bronze lion outside the MGM Grand Hotel is said to be the largest bronze sculpture in the western hemisphere.
There are actually things that are banned in Las Vegas: Hula hoops, Hip-Hop concerts, lap dances, vuvuzelas, pets on the Vegas strip and bath salts. You are also not allowed to feed the homeless or pigeons.
Hotel magnate Steve Wynn banned Paris Hilton and Lil Wayne from his hotels.
Vegas is no longer the gambling capital of the world...that title belongs to Macau.
There’s one slot machine for every four Las Vegas residents.
The Vegas strip is actually not in Las Vegas. The strip actually falls outside of the city limits and is instead in Winchester and Paradise, which are both part of Clark County.
There are over 10,000 taxis registered in Las Vegas.
"The famous phrase ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ was first launched in 2003. It was created by the R and R Partners Agency, who sought to devise a publicity statement to promote the city as somewhere people could feel empowered by ‘freedom’." Source
This Day in History: As reported in the May 14 1903 article in The Sun, an unnamed person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu. He was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna (sorcerer) who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons; the Kahuna was charged with manslaughter. Source
This is just one of many deaths that occurred during an exorcism. 28 year old father Eder Guzman-Rodriguez believed that his 2-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, was possessed by demons. Eder first killed his wife in order to prevent her from stopping the exorcism. "Guzman-Rodriguez said that the baby made motions that she wanted to fight during the exorcism. Then he claims that the demon entered his own body, causing him to beat and strangle the little girl, which caused fractured ribs, scrapes, bruises on a lung, and bleeding. When the police arrived they found Bibles and other religious books surrounding the baby on the bed." Source
"A 22-year-old woman died during an exorcism ritual in New Zealand, drowning at a relative’s home as up to 40 family members looked on...Janet Moses, a mother of two, was held under water in an attempt to drive away a makutu, or Maori curse. Containers holding an extensive amount of water were brought into the lounge of the house, in Wellington, for the ceremony. The woman had been dead for nine hours before her family contacted police. She had been placed on a bed and was found with grazes to her upper arms, forearms and torso." Source
A 9-year-old girl was beaten to death with a cane during an exorcism in Sri Lanka, Read more here.
A YOUNG WOMAN (26) DIED DURING EXORCISM! Among those arrested are her husband and a doctor! Read more here.
The only other instance that I could find of someone being beaten to death by a Bible happened in Maine in 2015. After a party, three Muslim refugees beat a Christian man to death with his own King James Bible. Source
This Day in History: Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and began a hunger strike on this day in 1989.
China is often described as the next superpower to top America within the next few decades. At first glance, such an assertion makes sense. The country’s vast geography, natural resources, rich history, and tech-savvy populace puts it in a position to thrive in the 21st century. However, China’s rise as a superpower is not one of an overnight success, nor is it filled with pretty rainbows.
Indeed, China is one of the world’s longest-lasting civilizations, with cultural and political traditions that have been passed down to succeeding generations effortlessly. With such a vast history, China had gone through its own zeniths and nadirs. As is the nature of any civilization. However, China’s modern history has been a roller-coaster ride to say the least.
Despite having a massive formal governing apparatus that would put many empires to shame, China has not always had full control of its territorial jurisdiction. Once European powers reached Chinese shores in search of riches, they soon wanted their piece of pie. That meant slowly whittling away at Chinese territory. As the first movers in the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese and their missionaries colonized Macau.
Although the Portuguese’s venture was not exclusively about riches, it inspired other European actors such as the British to go and exploit China’s vast resources. Naturally, the Qing dynasty and Britain’s interests clashed once the British wanted to expand trade inside the country. What was originally a trade dispute between a Qing government wanting to maintain trade that overwhelmingly favored China, soon turned into a full-blown conflict as seen in the Opium War.
China was handed a humiliating defeat, which saw it turn over Hong Kong to the British. This marked a turning point in Chinese history. The once mighty country slowly deteriorated both internally and externally. China soon became a punching bag for smaller, yet more militarily advanced countries that started setting up trading outposts in Shanghai. Indeed, these moves were not welcome by the Chinese and many in the Qing court, but due to the country’s decaying institutions, it could do nothing to prevent further predations.
Even empires on the Western periphery, like Imperial Russia, started to prey on China when it annexed all of the Chinese land north of the Amur River in 1858, exploiting Chinese weakness along a border that was, at the time, 4,650 miles long. As if China’s foreign reversals weren’t enough, Imperial Japan also jumped in the mix and picked apart China like other European powers. Japan put the world on notice when it crushed China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. As a result of this humiliation, Japan added the island of modern-day Taiwan, the Liaodong Peninsula, and the Korean peninsula into its sphere of influence. Japan’s exploitation of its weaker mainland rival did not stop there.
Even after the Qing dynasty collapsed, nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek tried to put the political pieces back together during the 1920s, in an attempt to unify the country and restore Chinese greatness. However, Imperial Japan was ready to humiliate China yet again, when it invaded Manchuria in 1931, and occupied it until 1945, in an attempt to expand their industrialization efforts.
All in all, the mid-19th century up until the mid-20th century was a rocky period. It took game-changing events after World War II for China to finally get its political house in order and build itself up on its own terms.
China: From Powerful Imperial Rule to a Weakened State
As foreign powers such as the United States, Germany, Japan, and Russia carved out spheres of influence in the once-mighty empire, the Chinese imperial court began to lose legitimacy both domestically and abroad. In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution was the final straw that broke the Qing dynasty’s back. Chinese reformers grew tired of their country’s weakness and organized revolts across the country that ultimately forced the last Qing emperor, Pu Yi, to abdicate in 1912. However, the transition from empire to a modern-day nation-state was filled with many road bumps for China.
Despite political reformer and provisional president of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen’s attempts to modernize the Chinese state, the country was quickly mired in internal struggles that prevented it from forming a coherent political structure in the immediate years following the fall of the Qing dynasty. Warlord control of the country soon became the norm as many optimistic Chinese reformers then realized the road to Chinese political stability would not come easy.
The Move to Unify the Chinese State
By the 1920s, China’s political destiny slowly started to change.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that movements began to emerge, with hopes to unify China and establish it as a sovereign nation free of foreign exploitation. The emergence of the Nationalist and Communist movements in China appealed to nationalistic sentiment among the populace. Their messages, while ideologically different in economic matters, had a vision of restoring China’s rightful place on the world stage. They viewed the Qing dynasty as corrupt and feckless for allowing European powers and Japan to carve out the country. For China to be great, it had to be free of foreign influence.
The dream of a unified China nearly became a reality when the Nationalist (Kuomintang) movement led by Chiang Kai-Shek ended warlord rule and began consolidating the Chinese state. However, hopes of a unified China on both ideological and political lines were temporarily dashed when the Japanese invaded in the 1930s. The subsequent expansion of World War II to the Asian theater saw the previously dominant Nationalist forces having to fend off Japanese forces. Such fighting left the Nationalist forces greatly depleted, while their Communist foes pulled their forces in the Chinese interior.
Little did the Nationalists know that once World War II came to an end, they would be up against a replenished and emboldened Communist movement. And this time around, they would not go down without a fight.
Unifying the Chinese State Under Communism
Once the dust settled from World War II, national unity went out the window. Communist forces under Mao Zedong were ready to duke it out with Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist faction. So began the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). After four years of hard fighting, the Communists defeated the already depleted Kuomintang in 1949. By October 1949, Mao Zedong’s communist government was ready to usher in a new era of consolidated rule in China by declaring the People’s Republic of China. In response, the defeated Nationalists scurried to the island of Formosa, which would be renamed as Taiwan or the Republic of China. Despite China’s stubbornness in delegitimizing the independent nation on the world stage, Taiwan would remain under the thumb of Chiang Kai-Shek until his death in 1975.
Once in command, Mao was focused on consolidating his internal power and centralizing the Chinese state at the domestic level. The Chinese leader was not so concerned about expanding China’s reach abroad during his first few years as Chairman of the Communist Party. Once his power was firmly established, he then proceeded to make China an industrial power conforming to principles of central-planning. China was no longer going to be the pushover that it once was in the latter half of the 19th century. It was ready to leave its mark on the international stage.
The Omnipresent Chinese Bureaucracy
The Chinese story is one of the eternal conflicts between centralized control and violent regionalism, as noted by Jacob L. Shapiro. Chairman Mao was faced with presiding over a large country with a long history of political violence. China encompasses such a vast territory, which necessitates large, bureaucratic systems to administer it. For political purposes, this bureaucracy has helped China maintain control over its jurisdiction in the short and mid-term. However, in the long-term this bureaucracy would become unwieldy and parasitic. As a result, high taxation and economic stagnation would follow after this bureaucracy became ingrained in the Chinese political system. This has been a fixture of China’s so-called “Dynastic Cycle,” which appeared to rear its ugly head in modern times. Communist Party elites did not want to become the next generation of leaders who fell victim to this vicious cycle.
Mao despised the Chinese bureaucracy and was able to rip it to shreds when he initially took the helm of the Chinese state. However, when Mao wanted to embark on the Great Leap Forward—an ambitious program created to rapidly change Chinese industry and agriculture through state planning—he had to come to grips with the reality that he needed a bureaucracy to carry out his grandiose vision.
Off to the bureaucratic races China went.
The Great Leap Forward
Fearful of Mao’s punitive actions, Chinese bureaucrats fudged data in order to placate him. What seemed like a political maneuver to gain favor within the government, would later turn out to be a disaster for the people living in the countryside. China’s Great Leap Forward experiment was initially marketed as the program to take China to the next level of economic development. The Great Leap Forward was a concerted effort to collectivize the Chinese economy and hand over the commanding heights to the Chinese state. Private property and a market-based price system were cast aside, while the Chinese central planners tried to play god.
But playing god with the economy comes with a massive price to pay. Even the best central planners are unable to break the laws of economics. Such heavy-handed interventions in the economy destroyed China’s agricultural sector. In turn, the decimation of Chinese agriculture created famine conditions, which led to the deaths of an estimated range of 20 million to 45 million people. The casualties suffered during the Great Leap Forward made China another tragic case of democide, as the country became another casualty of central planning. Consequently, Mao Zedong saw his political image tarnished after this failed socialist experiment, which called into question the validity of his political ideology. But the man-made disaster did not deter him from pursuing other ambitious political programs. Mao was intent on leaving his political mark in China.
The Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 was Mao’s final attempt to impose a top-down program on the Chinese populace. This ambitious political venture sought to re-assert proletarian values and rid Chinese society of subversive bourgeois elements. However, this social program turned into a wide-scale political purge that hamstrung economic growth and undermined the civil liberties of millions in China. Like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution proved that Mao was too ambitious in socially engineering society according to his grandiose political vision. With two controversial efforts led by the Chinese state to radically transform the nation’s society, China’s political class started to become restless. Even the Communist Party knew that Mao took things too far. It was becoming clear that China was on the verge of falling into political chaos. A new course would need to be taken for the country to advance, lest it become another victim of its well established Dynastic Cycle. Several leaders in the Chinese Communist Party were ready to step up to the plate.
Geopolitical Tensions Create New Openings
Politics never occur in a vacuum. Countries’ destinies are often shaped by external events, or at the very least, must adapt to international trends. In its quest to become a global superpower, China was no stranger to this. During the ambitious Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution programs, China was experiencing significant changes in its foreign policy. Communism may have had a unified vision against the bourgeois classes, but it witnessed numerous splits among countries throughout the 20th century. National interests often see ideologically similar countries take antagonistic paths.
The Communist sphere was indeed a house divided once the Chinese state was well established and ready to plot its own course. China’s Soviet “Big Brother” would soon learn that China was ready to grow up and pursue its own agenda. Initially, disputes surrounding debts that China incurred during the Korean War and the border it shared with the Soviet Union caused unrest between the two superpowers. Many Soviet officials saw Mao’s leadership purges as a flashback to the brutal regime of Josef Stalin. As a result, Soviet leadership became weary of their Communist “little brother” down South. In the same token, the Chinese remembered their exploitation at the hands of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Naturally, they had no interest in repeating the same predatory relationship with its northern neighbor.
Looking from afar, America took advantage of this geopolitical tension by playing China off of the Soviet Union. The first concrete step in undermining the Soviet Union was Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, which helped re-establish diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries. With China now tasting the fruits of international capitalism, albeit to a limited degree, its old economic model of top-down control was on the ropes. Additionally, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution programs made the more pragmatic elements of the Chinese Communist Party reconsider Maoism. The economic benefits from restored relationships with America were simply too large to ignore. On top of that, the Chinese state could capture unprecedented economic benefits from opening up trade with America. This would enable China to not only grow economically, but also strengthen its governing apparatus. The Chinese state was then set for new leadership to emerge and continue integrating China into the global market. The days of Chinese isolation would soon come to an end.
The Economic and Political Transformation of Deng Xiaoping’s China
Once Deng Xiaoping succeeded Mao Zedong, China was poised for national greatness. Deng acknowledged that Maoism did not bring about its desired results for China, and a new economic program was needed to bring the country back to its feet. Now that the Communist Party was well entrenched in power and China was able to pacify any internal threats, the country was ready to interact with the outside world on its own terms. Gone were the days that China would be bullied by the West.
Recognizing the failure of central planning, while also taking into account the economic potential China had on the international stage, Deng Xiaoping embarked on a series of bold reforms. Unlike its humiliating experience of the late 19th century, China was opening up its markets without being the victim of gunboat diplomacy.
Deng’s regime enacted certain reforms that brought back market dynamics, albeit in limited form, to the Chinese economy. Land privatization and the creation of special economic zones helped make China more competitive on the international arena. According to certain reports, China’s annual GDP growth rate ranged from 9.5 to 11.5 percent from 1978 to 2013. Thanks to these market-based reforms, China’s GDP increased tenfold and, as a result, millions of Chinese were lifted out of poverty. The horrific scenes of the Great Leap Forward soon became a distant memory as skyscrapers dotted illustrious cities like Shanghai, and factories were built left and right to bolster China’s breakneck industrial growth. “Made in China” soon became a staple of China’s economic prowess, as it flooded the world with basic goods coming out of its factories. But this could never have been possible without China making an attempt to open up its markets.
As Milton Friedman observed, economic freedom is generally a precondition for political freedom. When societies see economic freedoms gradually expanded, the new rich and emerging middle classes begin demanding more political freedoms.
As Chinese economic growth soared throughout the 1980s, its citizens demanded more than just economic prosperity. The death of pro-reform Communist leader Hu Yaobang in April 1989, caused several disturbances throughout the country. While on the economic uptick, Post-Mao China was marked by political uncertainty and Hu’s death added more fuel to the fire. Both the general populace and the political elite were rocked by the market reforms of Deng’s regime, which benefited some members of the newly rising entrepreneurial class, but still did not satisfy China’s humbler citizens.
The ruling elite also faced some questions about political legitimacy. Some of the concerns centered around corruption, employment prospects, inflation, and political freedoms. China’s student class started to demand new freedoms such as democracy, transparency in government, and free speech rights among other things. Protests started to pop up throughout the country, with the main ones centering around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The Historical Significance of Tiananmen Square
Historically, Tiananmen Square held great significance in Chinese politics. It was the place where the May Fourth Movement of 1919 occurred, when students’ protests aired grievances with the Chinese government’s tepid response to the Treaty of Versailles, which awarded Japan territories in the Shandong province. This movement helped jumpstart the Chinese Communist and Nationalist movements respectively.
Fast forward 30 years, the Proclamation of the People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949, took place on Tiananmen Square as well. This marked the end of the Chinese Communist Revolution (1945-1949) and ushered in the Communist Party’s dominance over Chinese politics.
In 1989, student protestors sought to use this same square as their platform to make history by demanding the introduction of basic civil liberties—such as free speech and the right to peacefully assemble against the government—concepts which were unheard of throughout China’s long political history. In the fateful month of April 1989, they took to the streets in protest. Indeed, these students made history, but things didn't go as planned for them.
Chinese Leadership Becomes Weary of the Threat of Democratic Reforms
Wanting to preserve the Communist Party’s political supremacy at all costs, China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, along with his Communist Party brain trust, perceived the protests as a political threat. Wasting no time in responding to these protests, the Chinese government proceeded to use force after the Chinese State Council declared martial law on May 20th, and deployed approximately 300,000 troops to Beijing. When troops arrived in Beijing on June 4th, they began killing protestors and bystanders.
The Chinese government arrested thousands of protesters, cracked down on other demonstrations in the country, kicked out foreign journalists, censored coverage of the Tiananmen incident in the press, bolstered police powers, and purged officials it believed to be receptive to the protestors’ cause. Estimates pin the death toll from several hundred to thousands.
Unsurprisingly, this incident received international condemnation. However, China’s status as a nuclear power and its newfound prosperity positioned it where it could avoid any direct military confrontation from other countries who disapproved of its agenda. Unlike 19th-century China, 20th-century China could take bold political actions without the fear of international actors trying to directly attack it.
The Birth of Tank Man
A day after the crackdown, on June 5, 1989, one of the most iconic images from the Tiananmen protests emerged. A man, who would be known as Tank Man or the Unknown Rebel, stood in front of a convoy of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square.
The lead tank tried to maneuver past the man, but was met with nonviolent resistance. The man repeatedly shuffled in front of the tank to obstruct the tank’s path. After a while, the lead tank stopped in its tracks and the armored tanks behind it stopped as well. From there, a short pause began with the man and tanks remaining in a standstill.
The video footage then shows the man climbing on top of the tank’s turret and chatting with a crew member and the tank’s commander. After having a conversation, the man jumps back down and gets in front of the tank again. The standoff between the man and tank continued until two figures in blue came out and pulled the man to the side. To this day, witnesses at this event are unsure about who pulled the “Tank Man” to the side. Furthermore, the identity and fate of the man is still unknown, although there has been speculation that he was either executed or fled the country shortly thereafter.
China’s Authoritarianism Lives On
The Tiananmen Square massacre was indeed a turning point in Chinese history. After an unprecedented liberalization of the economy up until the late 1980s, the Chinese state firmly put the breaks on any type of political reform that would enhance political freedoms. China showed the entire world that it would put hard limits on freedom, even if it meant receiving stiff criticism from Western democratic governments. As a sovereign nuclear power, China could proceed with its domestic policy as it pleased, knowing full well that no other world power would try to aggress against it.
To this day, civil liberties that Westerners often take for granted are heavily restricted in China. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has embarked on one of the most ambitious censorship programs in human history. Now the Chinese state is even putting Muslim Uighurs in re-education camps, much to the chagrin of international human rights observers. The Tiananmen incident remains one of the most heavily censored topics in Chinese political discourse.
The iconic image of the man confronting the tanks is a strong symbol of mankind’s eternal struggle to achieve freedom. Despite its fantastic economic growth, China remains one of the more authoritarian countries in the world. Just like freedom did not come to the West overnight, basic freedoms will likely take decades before they firmly take root in China.
Until then, the Chinese state remains firm in its hold over the Chinese populace.
