The era name Chongzhen means ‘honourable and auspicious’ but his reign, and the Ming Dynasty, were to end with his suicide in the face of widespread rebellion.
21st June 1919: The German High Seas naval fleet is scuttled at Scapa Flow
21st June 2019
Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor, made a secret trip to China to meet with Premier Zhou Enlai.
Official figures reported 241 deaths as a result of the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests but unofficial estimates, including one by the US Ambassador at the time, place the figure at more than twice that.
The world’s earliest dated printed book, a copy of the Diamond Sutra, was created in China.
Thomas Stevens departed San Francisco on a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, to become the first person to cycle around the world.
The Terracotta Army was discovered in Shaanxi province, China.
Port Arthur was a fortified naval base in the south of Manchuria that had been leased to Russia since 1898.
1st January 1942: Declaration by the United Nations agreed and signed by the four major Allied nations during the Second World War
- 1st January 2023
- Tagged as: America, Britain, China, Churchill, Litvinov, Roosevelt, Russia, Second World War, T. V. Soong, UN, United Nations, United States, USA, USSR, WW2
The original signatories – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the USSR’s Ambassador to the US Maxim Litvinov, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs T. V. Soong – were joined the next day by a further 24 nations.
It was during the Long March that Mao Zedong emerged as the best person to lead the Chinese Communist Party, and his survival alongside less than 10% of the original troops mythologised him and reinforced his authority.
The Chinese Communists in the People’s Liberation Army had been fighting the second stage of a long and costly civil war against the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, known as the Kuomintang, since shortly after the end of the Second World War.
HistoryPod Extra: The Myth of Gavrilo Princip’s Sandwich
28th June 2015
11th November 1918: WW1 Armistice of Compiègne is signed
11th November 2022
11th November 1918: WW1 Armistice of Compiègne is signed
11th November 2022
9th November 1989: East Germany opens the Berlin Wall
9th November 2019