Historical Events & Dates III

1. German composer Ludwig van Beethoven dies at the age of 56 in Vienna of liver and kidney disease.

2. French philosopher Albert Camus, known for his books The Outsider & The Myth of Sisyphus, dies in a car accident age 46 in Villeblevin, France.

3. Black Death - or the Plague, kills an estimated 25-75 million throughout Asia & Europe.

4. Sierra Leone gains independence from Britain.

5. Atrocities committed in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) under the absolute rule of King Leopold II of Belgium lead to some 10 million deaths.

6. A coup d'état sees members of the country's ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), being deposed by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar's military.

7. Lod Airport massacre committed by three members of the Japanese Red Army, sympathisers to the Palestinian struggle, sees 26 people died.

8. The Munich massacre in Munich, West Germany, carried out by eight members of the Palestinian militant organisation Black September sees two Israeli athletes dead. Nine people are taken hostage and ultimately all the hostages and some of the terrorists die in a failed rescue attempt.

9. Known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d'état - a U.S.- and British-instigated, Iranian army-led overthrow of the Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the autocratic rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with the objectives being to protect British oil interests in Iran after its government refused to concede to western oil demands. It was instigated by the United States (under the name Operation Ajax) and the United Kingdom (under the name Operation Boot).

10. Iranian Green Movement - protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office after what they see as a fraudulent election. Some 100 protesters would be killed.

11. Most deadly tornado in the US sweeps over Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana and sees some 750 people killed.

12. A major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 strikes off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, it was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Burma plate and the Indian plate. A massive tsunami with waves up to 30 m (100 ft) high wrecks havoc in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and other places and kills 227,898 people.

13. The Meiji Restoration - a pivotal event in Japanese history, marked the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of imperial rule under Emperor Meiji, leading to rapid modernization and transformation of Japan.

14. A revolutionary government gains control of Paris for a period of two months. promoting policies that tended toward a progressive, anti-religious system of their own self-styled socialism, which was an eclectic mix of many 19th-century schools of thought.

15. Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary and Marxist theorist Rosa Luxembourg is murdered at the age of 47 alongside revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht (47) in Berlin by right wing irregular soldiers known as the Freikorps.

16. The Vietnam war ends with the fall of Saigon resulting in a Communist victory.

17. Tunisia street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi self immolates himself at the age of 26, protesting nepotism, hopelessness and ill-treatment in his home country. This sets of the Arab Spring that spreads to several countries including Bahrain, Egypt & Syria.

18. Rape of Nanjing or the Nanjing Massacre - the mass murder of Chinese civilians by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing leads to the deaths of some 200,000+ civilians.

19. Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa).

20. John Paul Sartre, French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy, existentialism and Marxism dies at the age of 74 in Paris of pulmonary edema.

21. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher, philologist, poet, cultural critic, and composer who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers dies in Weimar, Germany at the age of 55 from a stroke.

22. The collapse of the Assad regime. Bashar Assad is ousted by the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Jihadists, after 24 years of ruling Syria.