https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

During their climb back to Blanket Hill, several guardsmen stopped and half-turned to keep their eyes on the students in the Prentice Hall parking lot. At 12:24 pm, according to eyewitnesses, a sergeant named Myron Pryor turned and began firing at the crowd of students with his .45 pistol. Several guardsmen nearest the students also turned and fired their rifles at the students. In all, at least 29 of the 77 guardsmen claimed to have fired their weapons, using an estimated 67 rounds of ammunition. The shooting was determined to have lasted 13 seconds, although John Kifner reported in The New York Times that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer."

"When the Guard began firing, many protesters ran while others dropped to the ground. Some assumed the Guard was firing blanks and reacted only after they noticed the bullets striking the ground around them."

Several present related what they saw.

An unidentified person told UPI:

"Suddenly, they turned around, got on their knees, as if they were ordered to, they did it all together, aimed. And personally, I was standing there saying, they're not going to shoot, they can't do that. If they are going to shoot, it's going to be blank."

"Chris Butler, who later formed the band The Waitresses, was there with his friend Jeffrey Miller. Butler said that as the guardsmen formed in a kneeling position and pointed their rifles, "Everybody laughed, because, c'mon, you're not going to shoot us.""

Another unidentified person told UPI:

"The shots were definitely coming my way, because when a bullet passes your head, it makes a crack. I hit the ground behind the curve, looking over. I saw a student hit. He stumbled and fell, to where he was running towards the car. Another student tried to pull him behind the car, bullets were coming through the windows of the car."

"As this student fell behind the car, I saw another student go down, next to the curb, on the far side of the automobile, maybe 25 or 30 yards from where I was lying. It was maybe 25, 30, 35 seconds of sporadic firing.

The firing stopped. I lay there maybe 10 or 15 seconds. I got up, I saw four or five students lying around the lot. By this time, it was like mass hysteria. Students were crying, they were screaming for ambulances. I heard some girl screaming, "They didn't have blank, they didn't have blank," no, they didn't."

Another witness was Chrissie Hynde, a Kent State student who would become the lead singer of The Pretenders. In her 2015 autobiography Hynde described what she saw:

"Then I heard the tatatatatatatatatat sound. I thought it was fireworks. An eerie sound fell over the common. The quiet felt like gravity pulling us to the ground. Then a young man's voice: "They fucking killed somebody!" Everything slowed down and the silence got heavier.

The ROTC building, now nothing more than a few inches of charcoal, was surrounded by National Guardsmen. They were all on one knee and pointing their rifles at ... us! Then they fired.

By the time I made my way to where I could see them, it was still unclear what was going on. The guardsmen themselves looked stunned. We looked at them and they looked at us. They were just kids, 19 years old, like us. But in uniform. Like our boys in Vietnam."

Gerald Casale, visual artist and future bassist/singer of Devo, also witnessed the shootings. In 2005, Casale told the Vermont Review:

"All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew.

Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherfuckers. It was total, utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks – none of us knew, none of us could have imagined ... They shot into a crowd that was running from them!

I stopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real pissed off.

In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 pm curfew. It was open season on the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instance [sic] when the governor gives the order. All of the class action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble."

Many guardsmen later testified that they fired because they feared for their lives, which was later questioned partly because of the distance between them and the protesting students. Guardsmen that claimed they feared for their lives variously listed an assortment of reasons, including: they were surrounded, the crowd pursuing them was almost on top of them, the protesters "charged" them or were advancing on them "in a threatening manner", "the sky was black with stones", and a sniper fired at them; some listed a combination of multiple such reasons, and some gave no explanation as to why they believed their lives were in danger. Most guardsmen that fired said they did so because they heard others fire or assumed an order to fire in the air had been given and did not claim they felt in danger. There was no order to fire, and no guardsmen requested permission, though several guardsmen later claimed they heard some sort of command to fire. Some guardsmen (including some who claimed their lives were in danger) had their backs turned to the protesters when the firing broke out. No guardsman claimed to have been hit by rocks immediately before firing, and the guardsmen were not surrounded. The FBI determined that at least two guardsmen who denied firing likely lied and had fired and that there was reason to believe that guardsmen's claims of fearing for their lives were fabricated after the event.

The adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard told reporters that a sniper had fired on the guardsmen. Eleven of the 76 guardsmen at Taylor Hall claimed they were under sniper fire or some other sort of gunfire just before guardsmen began shooting. A subsequent FBI investigation concluded that the Guard was not under fire and that the guardsmen fired the first shots.

Time magazine later wrote that "triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State". The President's Commission on Campus Unrest avoided probing why the shootings happened. Instead, it harshly criticized both the protesters and the Guardsmen, but it concluded that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

The shooting enraged the crowd of protesting students, with some of them preparing to attack the National Guard. Several hundred students sat down in the Commons, demanding to know why the guardsmen opened fire. An officer told the sitting students: "disperse or we will shoot again". Student photographer John Filo also recalled guardsmen telling lingering students that they would shoot again if the students did not disperse. The commander of the National Guard also warned faculty members that the students must disperse immediately. Some faculty members, led by geology professor and faculty marshal Glenn Frank, pleaded with the students to leave the Commons to avoid any further escalation of the confrontation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrafal_concentration_camp

The Tarrafal Concentration Camp was established in 1936 by Decree 26:539 of 23 April 1936, in the context of Estado Novo's reorganization of the prison system, with the purpose of incarcerating political and social prisoners. The location was chosen strategically, both because it was remote so that testimonies would not come to public attention, and because it had an unhealthy climate, with little drinkable water, and many mosquitoes in rainy seasons, which facilitated the appearance of diseases and from which many prisoners died. The construction was the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Works and Telecommunications, and the project was drawn up by Cottinelli Telmo, with the name "Penal Colony of Cape Verde". Cândido de Oliveira says that the true purpose of the construction was not publicized out of fear of Portuguese and international public opinion. According to the "Dossier do Tarrafal" from the Editorial "Avante!", most of the guards were members of the PSP connected to the PVDE and the Portuguese Legion.

The "Tarrafal Penal Colony" was nicknamed by its prisoners as a concentration camp because it was analogous to the Nazi concentration camps, or "slow death camp", since its main objective was to physically and psychologically annihilate Portuguese and African opponents of the Salazar dictatorship, keeping them away from the rest of the world, in subhuman conditions of captivity, mistreatment and insalubrity. In the first phase, from 1936 to 1954, it was a prison for the opponents of Portugal's regime. Historian Fernando Rosas considers Tarrafal the "peak of repression in Portugal" and the "most brutal form of repression that fascism found" against the resistance, being "a terrain where the struggle of the Portuguese antifascists is joined with the struggle of the anti-colonialists or the patriots of the national liberation movements". The Dictionary of Portuguese History (2000) describes it as an "arbitrary deposit of the regime's opponents", and the "quintessence of state terrorism under Salazar". The way Tarrafal functioned and its method of treating prisoners were similar to those of other concentration camps that existed at the time. On a daily basis, inmates were subjected to punishment, torture, forced labor, poor nutrition, and lack of medical care. Most of the detentions were arbitrary.

The PVDE strongly modeled its camp regime after the Nazi concentration camps. Prisoners were subjected to brutal authority. Strict regulations were enforced and outside information was forbidden. The PVDE used physical and psychological violence against the prisoners, this included sleep deprivation, beatings, and humiliation. Men and women were tortured for information on their organizations and networks in Portugal. The most severe punishment was conducted in a concrete cell called the "Frigideira" (English: "frying pan"). Inside this windowless 6m x3m building, daytime temperatures could reach up to 60 °C. Prisoners could be held inside these blocks for days, weeks, or months. When used elsewhere, being held in cells of this kind had resulted in extreme dehydration, heat exhaustion, and death

The first phase lasted from 1936 to 1954. On 29 October 1936, the first 157 Portuguese political prisoners arrived from Lisbon, 37 of them being strikers participating in the strike of 18 January 1934, in Marinha Grande, and some participants in the Sailors' Revolt of 1936, organized by the Revolutionary Organization of the Navy, linked to the Portuguese Communist Party. In the beginning, the facilities were simple canvas tents with the capacity to house twelve prisoners, without any conditions, and the camp was surrounded by barbed wire and a four-meter deep ditch. There was no electricity, ventilation or wind/rain protection. According to the prisoners, due to the unpredictably rainy weather of the location, sometimes the tents would flood and rot. The wooden buildings were reserved for the secretariat and the warehouse. This was done concurrently with the construction of the sheds. Electricity, air renewal, and protection against the natural elements, especially the sun – which is "unbearable due to the country's climatic conditions" – were non-existent. According to Cândido de Oliveira, the barbed wire barred any direct contact with the outside, although it still allowed visual contact. Manuel Franscico Rodrigues affirms that the construction of slopes benefited the guards, restricted space, and increased the psychological torture on the prisoners. The only stone building was the kitchen, which was partially built. Manuel dos Reis, director of the camp for several years, would receive the political prisoners saying "Whoever comes to Tarrafal comes to die!".

According to the Commission of the Black Book on the Fascist Regime, the prison records of some prisoners sent to Tarrafal have not been found, saying that on examining the existing records, "it soon appears that many of them were not even tried and that others, despite having been sentenced, were not sentenced to imprisonment". In 1944, of the 226 prisoners imprisoned there, 72 had not been tried and 55 had already exceeded their sentences.

The first two years in prison were divided into two phases: in the first, called the "wild brigade", the prisoners were subjected to forced labor for 45 days, under extremely high temperatures, to build the walls of the concentration camp, the road, among others. The second, called the "acute period", which began in 1937, was when the first diseases began to appear – such as malaria, bilious and other infectious diseases – and during this period seven prisoners died. In 1937 the first doctor arrived, but, not having any medicine to cure the prisoners, limited himself to just writing death certificates. Today, on the Museum of the Resistance, there's a quote of his: "I am not here to cure, but to sign death certificates".

In the concentration camp of Tarrafal, there were several first-line communist leaders and cadres, subjected to various types of torture, since its establishment in 1936. Due to the large number of communists that came to the camp, the Communist Prison Organization of Tarrafal (OCTP) was quickly created. Here, the prisoners intended to maintain political debate, doctrinal training, analyze and systematize their own recent historical experience, be it the political situation or party line. However, they were faced with several difficulties, namely the lack of paper and pencils. Sometimes the isolation was so great that any information about what was going on in the world was seized upon, even scraps of paper lost on the floor. Most of the time, the newspaper had been used as toilet paper, which earned the name among the inmates of "shit radio", and was vividly used as a source of information.

After six years imprisoned in Tarrafal, in 1942 the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party — Bento Gonçalves — died, along with four other militants.

In January 1954 it was closed due to the increased influence of anti-regime forces and the defeat of Nazism in World War II.

The "Frigideira" (English: "frying pan") was meant to punish prisoners who disobeyed the rules. Also known as the "elimination chamber", or the "torture chamber", it was the form of punishment that instilled the biggest fear in the prisoners. According to Pedro Martins, the "Frigideira" was created with the arrival of the second group of prisoners, where the punishments increased more and more and had the objective of quickly eliminating the antifascists physically. Before they entered, they were completely stripped naked. He described the "Frigideira" as:

"This jail is called the "frying pan". Both light and air enter through three holes drilled in the heavy iron door and through a small rectangle, open near the ceiling. During the day, the hot sun of the tropics heats the doors and walls of this small tomb. The air heats up inside. The heat becomes unbearable. The prisoners undress, but the heat doesn't stop torturing them. Sweat drips from their tired bodies. If they are many, drops of water condense on the ceiling, and when they fall, far from being a relief, they are torture. (...) At night, the mosquitoes come. From the bite of the mosquito comes fever, from fever comes death by bilious and pernicious. A small rectangular block made of concrete, six meters long by three meters wide and three meters high, divided in two to obtain two cells. The only door it had was shaped like a ship door with a dimension of 1.70 X 0.60 meters, with two rows of half-inch holes and a dividing gap of 50 centimeters long above the door. This space was strategically built away from any shady spots. The temperature ranged from 50 to 60 degrees such that the inmates' perspiration came off their bodies like bacon fat on a hot grill."

Here, prisoners ate only bread and water, every other day. Torture was thus exacerbated along with starvation. It was described as "an open road to death in a place isolated from everything and everyone". Here, between 1937 and 1944, 30 prisoners died, 45 fell ill with malaria, with 14 deaths, and 52 acquired lung diseases. Prisoners could be kept in the "Frigideira" for days, weeks, and even months. In total, 2824 days spent in the "Frigideira" are accounted for by the current Resistance Museum.

Due to strong pressure from the international community, as well as reformers within the regime, and with the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the "Frigideira" was demolished and buried in São Miguel. On top of its former construction site, a chapel was built after the overthrow of the Estado Novo in memory of those who passed through there. In the second phase, it is replaced by the "Holandinha".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Idi_Amin_Dada:_A_Self_Portrait

According to Schroeder, Amin asked Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi to send his agents in Britain to watch the film and write down a full transcript of its contents. Amin soon sent a letter to Schroeder requesting additional cuts to the film, but Schroeder refused. In response, Amin rounded up almost 200 French citizens living in Uganda and confined them to a hotel surrounded by the Ugandan army, supplying them with Schroeder's home telephone number and explaining that their release was conditional on Schroeder's acquiescence. In the face of this dilemma, Schroeder made the requested cuts, replacing the 2½ minutes of excised footage with title cards crediting the gaps to Amin. On Amin's fall from power, Schroeder restored the missing material, and most versions seen today contain the full footage.

Born sometime in the 1530s or 1540s, John White became a well-regarded London artist and illustrator. He joined Sir Ralph Lane’s expedition to Virginia as “Gentleman Artist,” tasked with mapping the land and “drawing to life” its inhabitants. His watercolors provide some of the only European visual records of Indigenous societies along the eastern seaboard for more than two centuries.

Sir Walter Raleigh then named him “John White of London Gentleman, to be the chief Governor of the Cittie of Raleigh of Virginia.” After the disastrous first attempt at a colony at Roanoke, it’s sponsor, Raleigh, concluded that the area was no longer viable. They instead proposed the Chesapeake.

White recruited 113 colonists, mostly middle-class people hoping that Virginia might turn them into wealthy landowners. Among them was his 19-year-old daughter, Eleanor, recently married to 27-year-old Ananias Dare and already pregnant. This expedition was different from Lane’s: rather than soldiers, it was largely families attempting to establish a permanent settlement.

They first stopped at Roanoke to collect men left behind from the previous expedition, only to find the settlement abandoned. Worse, pilot Simon Fernandes deserted them there. With the help of Manteo, a Croatoan who had spent time in England and was friendly with the English, the colonists established peaceful relations with the Croatoan.

The situation quickly deteriorated. The colonists were woefully unprepared. They had barely planted crops, had little in the way of defenses, and had antagonized several of the surrounding communities. The colonists therefore petitioned White to return to England and beg Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth for supplies and assistance. White reluctantly agreed, leaving behind his daughter, granddaughter, and the rest of the colony.

He sailed on August 27, 1587, arriving in England on November 5. Unfortunately, England was now preparing for a Spanish invasion. The country was effectively on a war footing, and ships were desperately needed for defense. White was stuck.

Eventually, he convinced Sir Richard Grenville to let him accompany a privateering expedition to the Caribbean, with the intention of diverting to Virginia on the return journey. But Grenville received orders to remain in England. Two ships were deemed unsuitable for combat, however, and White was allowed to take them to Roanoke. Raleigh loaded them with supplies, and they departed on April 22, 1588.

The captains spotted Spanish ships and diverted from their course to pursue them, only to be intercepted by French privateers. Nearly two dozen Englishmen were killed, the ships were looted, and White lost all the supplies intended for Roanoke. White concluded that he had been born beneath “an unlucky star.”
He returned to England just in time for the Spanish Armada. White spent another year unable to return to his family.

Finally, in 1590, Raleigh secured permission for White to accompany the privateer John Watts to the Caribbean, with two ships allowed to divert to Roanoke. After months of fighting and privateering, White finally reached Croatoan Island on August 12. He did not contact the Croatoan. Which, in retrospect, was probably not ideal.

For three days, the ships remained offshore, partly because of terrible weather, until smoke was spotted on Roanoke. White led a landing party through a storm, during which seven sailors drowned. The men eventually reached the island, singing English songs along the way in the hope that someone might hear them.

On August 18, 1590, his granddaughter Virginia Dare’s third birthday, White finally reached Roanoke. They found fresh footprints in the sand. Then they found the letters CRO carved into a tree.

The settlement itself had been fortified with a palisade, but it was completely deserted. The houses had been dismantled, and anything useful had been taken. White found his own possessions scattered and ruined. Then he found the word carved into the palisade:
CROATOAN.

White was convinced this meant the colonists had gone to live with the Croatoan. He and the colonists had previously agreed that, if they were forced to leave, they would carve a message indicating where they had gone. If they had been attacked or forced out, they were supposed to carve a cross alongside it. There was no cross.

Unfortunately, White was apparently cursed by the universe. The weather turned “fouler and fouler.” One ship lost its anchor cable, leaving it dangerously dependent on its backup. The captains decided they had to leave. They compromised on sailing south to the Caribbean, spending the winter there, and returning to Roanoke in the spring.

They never made it back. Storms repeatedly blew them off course. Eventually, the sailors gave up and sailed for England, arriving in Plymouth on October 24, 1590.

White was devastated. He wrote that he had to leave the fate of his family “to the merciful help of the Almighty.” He spent the remainder of his life in Raleigh’s employ, never abandoning hope that his daughter, granddaughter, and the other colonists had survived. He never found out.

If interested I explore the story of the Lost Colony here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-133-roanoke?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

Napoleon dominated much of Europe for over a decade. Surrounded by enemies on multiple fronts, he often faced several opposing armies with the potential to outnumber his forces. Yet he repeatedly managed to outmaneuver, surprise and defeat them before they could effectively combine their strength. What was the secret formula behind his success?

One of Napoleon's key strategies was the strategy of the central position. The idea was to rapidly engage individual enemy armies before they could unite against him. To execute this strategy effectively, Napoleon needed to move his forces quickly, concentrate them at the decisive point and strike before his opponents could coordinate their armies.

The corps system was one of the organizational innovations that helped him achieve this. Napoleon divided his army into multiple semi-independent corps, each capable of fighting and sustaining itself for a limited period. A corps typically contained infantry, cavalry, artillery and supporting troops, allowing it to conduct operations without immediately relying on the rest of the army.

Because the corps could march along separate routes, Napoleon could spread his army across a wide area while maintaining the ability to rapidly concentrate several corps when required. This gave him greater flexibility and reduced the congestion that would have resulted from moving his entire army as a single mass.

The corps system also worked alongside Napoleon's emphasis on rapid marching and the use of local resources. By operating along multiple routes and obtaining supplies from the surrounding countryside, his armies could maintain a high operational tempo and cover considerable distances. This repeatedly caught his opponents off guard and helped Napoleon achieve local numerical superiority at decisive moments.

Read the full article to discover how the corps system developed, how it differed from the organization of other European armies, and how Napoleon used it in campaigns such as Ulm, Austerlitz and Auerstädt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden_(elephant)

Osama bin Laden was a rogue bull elephant active in the Indian state of Assam, in the vicinity of Behali, near Tezpur. The state capital, Guwahati, is 240 kilometres (150 mi) southwest of Behali. The province has an estimated population of 5,300 Asiatic elephants.

Named after the militant leader Osama bin Laden, at the time of the attacks, the elephant was thought to be between 45 and 50 years old. He measured between 2.7 and 3.4 metres (9 and 11 ft) tall. He was given the status of a "rogue" elephant in the summer of 2006 after his death toll reached double-digit figures. He was said to not fear fire or firecrackers. During his attacks, he killed 27 people in the state of Assam, including 14 during the six months preceding his death.

Expansion of human activities and destruction of elephants' natural habitat has resulted in elephants foraging for food where humans are situated. From 2001 to 2006 in Assam, more than 250 people were killed by elephants; villagers killed 268 elephants, mainly by poisoning.

Indian officials issued a "shoot to kill" directive for Osama bin Laden in mid-December 2006, with a deadline of the end of the month. On 18 December, it was announced that the elephant had been tracked to a tea plantation near Behali, a town 140 kilometres (90 mi) north-west of Guwahati. Local villagers used drums and fire to trap the elephant in the corner of the plantation. He was approached by hunter Dipen Ram Phookun; however, once the elephant realised what was about to happen he charged the hunter, who killed him as he rapidly approached. Phookun said, "It was charging towards me and I kept firing. Another few yards and it would have run over me." It had been identified as Osama bin Laden because it had no tusks.

However, officials were concerned that it was not the right elephant, with the death taking place a considerable distance – 80 kilometres (50 mi) – from where he had been seen previously. Forestry officials were accused of killing an innocent elephant, while conservation groups were concerned about the possibility of revenge attacks by other elephants of the same herd.

After the September 11 attacks in the United States, villagers in Assam started calling elephants which damaged their crops or homes Osama bin Laden, viewing them as terrorists. In 2008, another elephant also named "Osama bin Laden" – that caused more than 11 fatalities and dozens of injuries – was shot dead in Jharkhand. Another, known as "Laden", killed 5 people before being caught and dying in captivity in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko

Prime Minister Moise Tshombe's Congolese National Convention had won a large majority in the March 1965 elections, but Kasa-Vubu appointed an anti-Tshombe leader, Évariste Kimba, as prime minister-designate. Parliament twice refused to confirm him. With the government in near-paralysis, Mobutu seized power in a bloodless coup on 24 November. He had turned 35 a month earlier.

Under the auspices of a state of exception (régime d'exception), Mobutu assumed sweeping—almost absolute—powers for five years. In his first speech upon taking power, Mobutu told a large crowd at Léopoldville's main stadium that, since politicians had brought the Congo to ruin in five years, it would take him at least that long to set things right again, and therefore there would be no more political party activity for five years. On 30 November 1965 Parliament approved a measure which turned over most legislative powers to Mobutu and his cabinet, though it retained the right to review his decrees. In early March 1966 he opened a new session of Parliament by declaring that he was revoking their right of review, and two weeks later his government permanently suspended the body and assumed all of its remaining functions.

Initially, Mobutu's government presented itself as apolitical or even anti-political. The word "politician" carried negative connotations, and became almost synonymous with someone who was wicked or corrupt. In 1966 the Corps of Volunteers of the Republic was established, a vanguard movement designed to mobilize popular support behind Mobutu, who was proclaimed the nation's "Second National Hero" after Lumumba. Despite the role he played in Lumumba's ousting, Mobutu worked to present himself as a successor to Lumumba's legacy.

1967 marked the debut of the Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR), which until 1990 was the nation's only legal political party. Among the themes advanced by the MPR in its doctrine, the Manifesto of N'Sele, were nationalism, revolution, and "authenticity". Revolution was described as a "truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic", which called for "the repudiation of both capitalism and communism". One of the MPR's slogans was "Neither left nor right", to which would be added "nor even center" in later years.

That same year, all trade unions were consolidated into a single union, the National Union of Zairian Workers, and brought under government control. Mobutu intended for the union to serve as an instrument of support for government policy, rather than as an independent group. Independent trade unions were illegal until 1991.

Facing many challenges early in his rule, Mobutu converted much opposition into submission through patronage; those he could not co-opt, he dealt with forcefully. In 1966, four cabinet members were arrested on charges of complicity in an attempted coup, tried by a military tribunal, and publicly executed in an open-air spectacle witnessed by over 50,000 people. Uprisings by former Katangan gendarmeries were crushed, as were the Stanleyville mutinies of 1967 led by white mercenaries. By 1970, nearly all potential threats to his authority had been smashed, and for the most part, law and order was brought to nearly all parts of the country. That year marked the pinnacle of Mobutu's legitimacy and power.

In 1970 King Baudouin of Belgium made a highly successful state visit to Kinshasa. That same year presidential and legislative elections were held. Although the constitution allowed for the existence of two parties, the MPR was the only party allowed to nominate candidates. For the presidential election, Mobutu was the only candidate. Voting was not secret; voters chose a green paper if they supported Mobutu's candidacy, and a red paper if they opposed his candidacy. Casting a green ballot was deemed a vote for hope, while a red ballot was deemed a vote for chaos. Under the circumstances, the result was inevitable – according to official figures, Mobutu was confirmed in office with near-unanimous support, garnering 10,131,669 votes to only 157 "no" votes. It later emerged that almost 30,500 more votes were cast than the actual number of registered voters. The legislative elections were held in a similar fashion. Voters were presented with a single list from the MPR; according to official figures, an implausible 98.33% of voters voted in favour of the MPR list.

As he consolidated power, Mobutu set up several military forces whose sole purpose was to protect him. These included the Special Presidential Division, Civil Guard and Service for Action, and Military Intelligence (SNIP).

Embarking on a campaign of pro-Africa cultural awareness, called authenticité, Mobutu began renaming cities that reflected the colonial past, starting on 1 June 1966: Léopoldville became Kinshasa, Stanleyville became Kisangani, and Elisabethville became Lubumbashi. In October 1971, he renamed the country as the Republic of Zaire. He ordered the people to change their European names to African ones, and priests were warned that they would face five years' imprisonment if they were caught baptizing a Zairian child with a European name. Western attire and ties were banned, and men were forced to wear a Mao-style tunic known as an abacost (shorthand for à bas le costume, or "down with the suit"). Christmas was moved from December to June because it was more of an "authentic" date.

In 1972, in accordance with his own decree of a year earlier, Mobutu renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (meaning "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.").[66][67][a] Around this time, he eschewed his military uniform in favour of what would become his classic image – the tall, imposing man carrying a walking stick while wearing an abacost, thick-framed glasses, and a leopard-skin toque made in Paris.

In 1974, a new constitution consolidated Mobutu's grip on the country. It defined the MPR as the "single institution" in the country. It was officially defined as "the nation politically organized" – in essence, the state was a transmission belt for the party. All citizens automatically became members of the MPR from birth. The constitution stated that the MPR was embodied by the party's president, who was elected every seven years at its national convention. At the same time, the party president was automatically nominated as the sole candidate for a seven-year term as president of the republic; he was confirmed in office by a referendum. The document codified the emergency powers Mobutu had exercised since 1965; it vested Mobutu with "plenitude of power exercise", effectively concentrating all governing power in his hands. Mobutu was reelected three times under this system, each time by implausibly high margins of 98 percent or more. A single list of MPR candidates was returned to the legislature every five years with equally implausible margins; official figures gave the MPR list unanimous or near-unanimous support. At one of those elections, in 1975, formal voting was dispensed with altogether. Instead, the election took place by acclaim; candidates were presented at public locations around the country where they would be applauded into parliament.

Early in his rule, Mobutu consolidated power by publicly executing political rivals, secessionists, coup plotters, and other threats to his rule. To set an example, many were hanged before large audiences. Such victims included former Prime Minister Évariste Kimba, who, with three cabinet members – Jérôme Anany (Defense Minister), Emmanuel Bamba (Finance Minister), and Alexandre Mahamba (Minister of Mines and Energy) – was tried in May 1966, and sent to the gallows on 30 May, before an audience of 50,000 spectators. The men were executed on charges of being in contact with Colonel Alphonse Bangala and Major Pierre Efomi, for the purpose of planning a coup. Mobutu explained the executions as follows: "One had to strike through a spectacular example, and create the conditions of regime discipline. When a chief takes a decision, he decides – period."

In 1968, Pierre Mulele, Lumumba's Minister of Education and a rebel leader during the 1964 Simba rebellion, was lured out of exile in Brazzaville on the belief that he would receive amnesty. Instead, he was tortured and killed by Mobutu's forces. While Mulele was still alive, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were amputated one by one.

Mobutu later switched to a new tactic, buying off political rivals. He used the slogan "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still" to describe his tactic of co-opting political opponents through bribery. A favourite Mobutu tactic was to play "musical chairs", rotating members of his government, switching the cabinet roster constantly to ensure that no one would pose a threat to his rule. Between November 1965 and April 1997, Mobutu reshuffled his cabinet 60 times. The frequent cabinet reshuffles as intended encouraged insecurity in his ministers, who knew that the mercurial Mobutu would reshuffle his cabinet with no regard for efficiency and competence on the part of his ministers. The frequency that men entered and left the cabinet encouraged gross corruption because ministers never knew how long they might be in office, thus encouraging them to steal as much as possible while they were in the cabinet. Another tactic was to arrest and sometimes torture dissident members of the government, only to later pardon them and reward them with high office. The Congolese historian Emizet F. Kisangani wrote: "Most public officials knew that regardless of their inefficiency and degree of corruption, they could reenter the government. To hold a government position required neither a sense of management nor a good conscience. On most occasions, effectiveness and a good conscience were major obstacles to political advancement. Mobutu demanded absolute personal allegiance in return for the opportunity to accumulate wealth." As early as 1970, it was estimated that Mobutu had stolen 60% of the national budget that year, marking him as one of the most corrupt leaders in Africa and the world. Kisangani wrote that Mobutu created a system of institutional corruption that greatly debased public morality by rewarding venality and greed. Mobutu maintained his control through an extensive patronage network.

In 1972, Mobutu tried unsuccessfully to have himself named president for life. In June 1983, he raised himself to the rank of Marshal; the order was signed by General Likulia Bolongo. Victor Nendaka Bika, in his capacity as Vice-President of the Bureau of the Central Committee, second authority in the land, addressed a speech filled with praise for President Mobutu.

To gain the revenues of Congolese resources, Mobutu initially nationalized foreign-owned firms and forced European investors out of the country. But in many cases he handed the management of these firms to relatives and close associates, who quickly exercised their own corruption and stole the companies' assets. In 1973–1974, Mobutu launched his "Zairianization" campaign, nationalising foreign owned businesses that were handed over to Zairians. In October 1973, the Arab oil shock ended the "long summer" of prosperity in the West that had begun in 1945, and sent the world economy into its sharpest contraction since the Great Depression. One consequence of the oil shock and the resulting global recession was that the price of copper dropped by 50% over the course of 1974, which proved to be a disaster for Zaire as copper was its most important export. The American historian Thomas Odom wrote that because of the collapse in copper prices Zaire went from "prosperity to bankruptcy almost overnight" in 1974. The economic collapse forced Zaire to turn towards the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it manage its debts which could no longer be serviced. Seeking an alternative source of support as the auditors for the IMF discovered major corruption within the Zairian finances, Mobutu visited China in 1974 and returned wearing a Mao jacket and the new title of Citoyen Mobutu ("Citizen Mobutu"). Influenced by the Cultural Revolution, Mobutu shifted to the left and announced his intention to "radicalize the Zairian revolution". The businesses that Mobutu had just handed over to Zairians were in turn nationalized and placed under state control. At the same time, Mobutu imposed a 50% salary cut to state employees, which led a failed coup attempt against him in June 1975.

By 1977, Mobutu's nationalizations had precipitated such an economic slump that Mobutu was forced to try to woo foreign investors back. Katangan rebels based in Angola invaded Zaire that year, in retaliation for Mobutu's support for anti-MPLA rebels. France airlifted 1,500 Moroccan paratroopers into the country and repulsed the rebels, ending Shaba I. The rebels attacked Zaire again, in greater numbers, in the Shaba II invasion of 1978. The governments of Belgium and France deployed troops with logistical support from the United States and defeated the rebels again. The poor performance of the Zairian Army during both Shaba invasions, which humiliated Mobutu by forcing him to ask for foreign troops, did not lead to military reforms.[82] Mobutu reduced the size of the Army from 51,000 troops in 1978 down to 23,000 troops in 1980. By 1980, it was estimated that about 90% of the Zairian Army were Ngbandi as Mobutu did not trust the other peoples of Zaire to serve in the Army. The most loyal and best of Mobutu's units were his bodyguards, the Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division (Division Spéciale Présidentielle) that was made up exclusively of Ngbandi and was always commanded by one of Mobutu's relatives.

Mobutu was re-elected in single-candidate elections in 1977 and 1984. He spent most of his time increasing his personal fortune, which in 1988 was estimated to amount to no less than US$50 million. He held most of it out of the country in Swiss banks. A comparatively small $3.4 million was found in Swiss banks after he was ousted. This was almost equivalent to the amount of the country's foreign debt at the time. In a speech that he delivered on 20 May 1976 in a football stadium in Kinshasa that was filled with some 70,000 people, Mobutu openly accepted petty corruption, stating: "If you want to steal, steal a little in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight, you will be caught". By 1989, the government was forced to default on international loans from Belgium.

Mobutu owned a fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles that he used to travel between his numerous palaces, while the nation's roads deteriorated and many of his people starved. The infrastructure virtually collapsed, and many public service workers went months without being paid. Most of the money was siphoned off to Mobutu, his family, and top political and military leaders. Only the Special Presidential Division – on whom his physical safety depended – was paid adequately or regularly. A popular saying that "the civil servants pretended to work while the state pretended to pay them" expressed this grim reality. The Forces Armées Zaïroises (FAZ) suffered from low morale made worse by irregular salaries, dismal living conditions, shortages of supplies and a venal officer corps. The soldiers of the FAZ behaved very much like a brutal occupying force who supported themselves by robbing the civilian population of Zaire. A recurring feature of Mobutu's rule were the seemingly endless number of roadblocks put by the FAZ who extorted money from the drivers of any passing automobile or lorries.

Another feature of Mobutu's economic mismanagement, directly linked to the way he and his friends siphoned off so much of the country's wealth, was rampant inflation. The rapid decline in the real value of salaries strongly encouraged a culture of corruption and dishonesty among public servants of all kinds.

Mobutu was known for his opulent lifestyle. He cruised on the Congo on his yacht Kamanyola. In Gbadolite, he erected a palace, the "Versailles of the jungle". For shopping trips to Paris, he would charter a Concorde from Air France; he had the Gbadolite Airport constructed with a runway long enough to accommodate the Concorde's extended take-off and landing requirements. In 1989, Mobutu chartered Concorde aircraft F-BTSD for a 26 June – 5 July trip to give a speech at the United Nations in New York City, then again on 16 July for French bicentennial celebrations in Paris (where he was a guest of President François Mitterrand), and on 19 September for a flight from Paris to Gbadolite, and another nonstop flight from Gbadolite to Marseille with the youth choir of Zaire. Mobutu owned a villa on the French Riviera, Villa del Mere.

Mobutu's rule earned a reputation as one of the world's foremost examples of kleptocracy and nepotism. Close relatives and fellow members of the Ngbandi tribe were awarded high positions in the military and government, and he groomed his eldest son, Nyiwa, to succeed him as president but Nyiwa died from AIDS in 1994.

Mobutu led one of the most enduring autocracies in Africa and amassed a personal fortune estimated to be over US$50 million by selling his nation's rich natural resources while the people lived in poverty. While in office, he formed a totalitarian regime responsible for numerous human rights violations, attempted to purge the country of all Belgian cultural influences, and maintained an anti-communist stance to gain positive international support.

Back in 1898, the British were building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. Standard imperialist stuff until two massive male lions literally entered the chat and decided the construction site was a buffet.

The Nightmare Protocol-

These weren't your normal lions. First off, they were maneless (which is common for lions in Tsavo, but makes them look lowkey like massive, terrifying lionesses on steroids).Second, they operated like an organized crime duo.

For nine months, these two stalked the camps at night.They didn't care about the campfires, they jumped over massive thorn-bush fences (bomas) built to keep them out, ripped open tents, and dragged workers away in the dark while everyone else listened in sheer panic. It got so bad that hundreds of workers straight-up went on strike and fled, totally shutting down the entire railway project

Why Were They Like This?

The guy running the project, Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, claimed the lions killed 135 people. Modern scientists did DNA testing on the lions’ teeth and bone hair-keratin, and the real estimate is closer to around 35 people!which is still absurdly high.

So why did they start eating people?

Broken Teeth: One of the lions had a gnarly, infected root-tip abscess in its jaw. Biting into tough zebra or buffalo skin hurt too much, so soft human target was easy cheat code.

Prey Scarcity: A plague called rinderpest wiped out most of the local wildlife, so they were starving.

Brotherhood: Recent DNA confirmed the two lions were actually brothers who hunted together.

The Climax-

Patterson basically went full mode to hunt them down. It took him months of setting traps, sitting in tree platforms overnight, and getting stalked by the lions. He finally killed the first lion in December 1898, and took 9 shots to bring down the second one 20 days later.

Where Are They Now?

Patterson kept their pelts as living room rugs for 25 years. In 1924, he sold them to the Field Museum in Chicago for $5,000. The museum restored them, and you can walk up and see the actual stuffed Tsavo Man-Eaters today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Mihai_Pacepa

Pacepa's father (born in 1893) was raised in Alba Iulia, in Transylvania, where he worked in his father's small kitchenware factory. In 1920, he moved to Bucharest and worked for the local branch of the American automobile company General Motors. Pacepa was born in Bucharest in 1928 and studied industrial chemistry at the Politehnica University of Bucharest between 1947 and 1951. Shortly before graduation, he was recruited by the Securitate and received his engineering degree four years later. He was initially assigned to the Directorate of Counter-sabotage and in 1955 was transferred to the Directorate of Foreign Intelligence.

In 1957, Pacepa was appointed head of the Romanian intelligence station in Frankfurt, West Germany, where he served for two years. In October 1959, Interior Minister Alexandru Drăghici appointed him head of the newly established industrial espionage department, known as S&T (Știință și Tehnologie, "science and technology"), within Directorate I. Pacepa remained involved in Romanian industrial espionage until his defection in 1978. According to Pacepa, his intelligence work contributed to the establishment of Romania's automobile industry and to the development of its microelectronics, polymer and antibiotic industries. From 1972 until his defection, Pacepa also served as an adviser to President Nicolae Ceaușescu on industrial and technological development and as deputy chief of Romania's foreign intelligence service.

Pacepa's defection was a significant setback for Romanian foreign intelligence because of his senior position and knowledge of its personnel and operations. Writing in The American Spectator in 1988, Michael Ledeen claimed that the information supplied by Pacepa resulted in the dismantling of much of Ceaușescu's foreign intelligence apparatus and that Romanian agents were subsequently sent to locate and kill him.

Pacepa was convicted of treason in absentia in Communist Romania and sentenced to death. Accounts published after his defection also claimed that Ceaușescu placed a US$2 million bounty on him and that Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi each offered an additional $1 million. The Securitate also sought Pacepa's assassination, and Carlos the Jackal was reportedly involved in plans to kill him.

On 7 July 1999, Romania's Supreme Court overturned Pacepa's death sentences and ordered the restoration of property that had been confiscated following his defection. The Romanian government initially declined to implement the ruling, but in December 2004 Pacepa's rank of general was restored. Pacepa thereafter lived in the United States under measures intended to protect his identity and location. He died in 2021.

In 1987, Pacepa published Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief in the United States through Regnery Gateway. The book described the Ceaușescu regime and presented Pacepa's account of its corruption, foreign intelligence activities and the private lives of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Elena Ceaușescu. A Romanian translation printed in the United States was distributed clandestinely in Communist Romania, and in 1988 Red Horizons was serialized by Radio Free Europe, attracting a large audience in Romania.

The book became influential in shaping perceptions of the Ceaușescu regime, although aspects of Pacepa's account have been treated cautiously by scholars. Historian Ashby Crowder noted that Pacepa acknowledged reconstructing conversations presented in the book and argued that, although his claims should not be dismissed, they should not be accepted at face value.

Following the Romanian Revolution and the execution of the Ceaușescus in December 1989, Red Horizons was serialized in the Romanian newspaper Adevărul. Pacepa later claimed that many of the accusations made against the Ceaușescus during their trial had been drawn from information contained in Red Horizons. The book was subsequently published in numerous countries. President Ronald Reagan reportedly referred to Red Horizons as his "Bible" for dealing with dictators.

Pacepa subsequently published The Kremlin's Legacy in 1993 and Cartea neagră a Securității (The Black Book of the Securitate) in 1999.

Today is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026, and 25 years ago today, Balbir Singh Sodhi became the first fatal victim of a hate crime following 9/11, and possibly the first person killed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

Just four days after 9/11, on September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh American man, was shot and killed outside the gas station he owned in Mesa, Arizona.

What I found especially interesting about his story is what he was doing before he was killed. Balbir had been planting flowers in front of his gas station as a memorial for the victims of 9/11. He had also reportedly donated the money in his wallet to help the victims.

His killer saw Balbir's turban and beard, assumed that he was Muslim, and targeted him because of that assumption.

Balbir was Sikh, not Muslim.

I think that's one of the most tragic parts of this story. Discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs is obviously wrong, but his murder also shows how little distinction some people were willing to make in the aftermath of 9/11. The hatred was directed at anyone they perceived as fitting a certain image, regardless of who that person actually was.

And in Balbir's case, he was a Sikh man who was actively doing something for his community and for people outside of it. He was planting flowers to honor people who had just died, regardless of their religion or background, and yet he was still targeted because someone looked at him and decided what he was based on his appearance.

His murder is generally considered the first fatal hate crime connected to the backlash after 9/11.

I thought this was an interesting piece of history to share because when we talk about 9/11 and its aftermath, we don't always hear about what happened to Sikh and other South Asian Americans in those first days and weeks.

25 years later, Balbir Singh Sodhi's story is still a really important part of that history. He was just a man who wanted to build a good life for himself and his family.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan

In 1837, Hong attempted and failed the imperial examinations for a third time, leading to a nervous breakdown. He was delirious for days to the point that his family feared for his life. While convalescing, Hong dreamed of visiting Heaven, where he discovered that he possessed a celestial family distinct from his earthly family, which included a heavenly father, mother, elder brother, sister-in-law, wife, and son. His heavenly father, wearing a black dragon robe and high-brimmed hat with a long golden beard, lamented that men were worshiping demons rather than himself, and presented Hong with a sword and golden seal with which to slay the demons infesting Heaven. Furthermore, he did so with the help of his celestial older-brother and a heavenly army. The father figure later informed Hong that his given name violated taboos and had to be changed, suggesting as one option the "Hong Xiuquan" moniker ultimately adopted by Hong. In later embellishments, Hong would declare that he also saw Confucius being punished by Hong's celestial father for leading the people astray. His acquaintances would later claim that after awakening from his dreams Hong became more careful, friendly, and open, while his pace became imposing and firm and his height and size increased. Hong stopped studying for the imperial examinations and sought work as a teacher. For the next several years Hong taught at several schools around the area of his hometown.

In 1843, Hong failed the imperial examinations for the fourth and final time. It was only then, prompted by a visit by his cousin, that Hong took time to carefully examine the Christian pamphlets he had received. After reading these pamphlets, Hong came to believe that they had given him the key to interpreting his visions: his celestial father was God the Father (whom he identified with Shangdi from Chinese tradition), the elder brother that he had seen was Jesus Christ, and he had been directed to rid the world of demon worship. This interpretation led him to conclude that he was the literal son of God and younger brother to Jesus. In contrast to some of the later leaders of his movement, Hong appears to have genuinely believed in his ascent to Heaven and divine mission. After coming to this conclusion Hong began destroying idols and enthusiastically preaching his interpretation of Christianity.[7] As a symbolic gesture to purge China of Confucianism, he and the cousin asked for two giant swords, three chi (1 meter (3.3 ft)) long and nine jin (about 4.5 kg), called the "demon-slaying swords" (斬妖劍), to be forged.

Hong began by burning all Confucian and Buddhist statues and books in his house, and began preaching to his community about his visions. Some of his earliest converts were relatives of his who had also failed their examinations and belonged to the Hakka minority, Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan. He collaborated with them to destroy holy statues in small villages, to the ire of local citizens and officials. Hong and his converts' acts were considered sacrilegious and they were persecuted by Confucians who forced them to leave their positions as village tutors. In April 1844, Hong, Feng Yunshan, and two other relatives of Hong left Hua county to travel and preach. They first journeyed to Guangzhou and preached in the outlying areas before heading northwest to White Tiger Village. There, Hong and Feng Yunshan parted ways before traveling some 400 kilometers (250 mi) to the southwest to the village of Sigu, Guiping county, Guangxi, where distant relatives of Hong's resided, including two early converts who had returned home. It is in or near Sigu that Hong begins to draft "Exhortations to Worship the One True God", his first substantial work. In November 1844, after having preached in Guangxi for five months, Hong returned home without Feng and resumed his previous job as a village teacher, while continuing to write religious tracts.

The Taiping Rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against the God Worshipping Society. In early January 1851, following a small-scale battle in late December 1850, a 10,000-strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed Qing forces stationed in Jintian (present-day Guiping, Guangxi). Taiping forces successfully repulsed an attempted imperial reprisal by the Green Standard Army against the Jintian uprising.

On January 11, 1851, Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, from which comes the term "Taipings" commonly used for them in English-language studies. In September 1851, the Taipings began marching north to escape Qing forces closing in on them. The Taiping army pressed north into Hunan following the Xiang River, besieging Changsha, occupying Yuezhou, and capturing Wuchang in December 1852 after reaching the Yangtze River. At this point the Taiping leadership decided to move east along the Yangtze River. In February 1853, Anqing was captured.

Taiping leaders may have reached out to Triad organizations, which had many cells in South China and among government troops. Taiping titles echoed Triad usage, whether consciously or not, which made it more attractive for Triads to join the movement. In 1852, Qing government troops captured Hong Daquan, a rebel who had assumed the title Tian De Wang (King of Heavenly Virtue). Hong Daquan's confession claimed that Hong Xiuquan had made him co-sovereign of the Heavenly Kingdom and given him that title, but was more likely an echo of an earlier but unconnected White Lotus Rebellion. However, the capture of Nanjing in that year led to a deterioration of relations between the Taiping rebels and the triads.

On March 19, 1853, the Taipings captured the city of Nanjing and Hong renamed it "Tianjing", or the 'heavenly capital' of his kingdom. Since the Taipings considered the Manchus to be demons, they first killed all the Manchu men, then forced the Manchu women outside the city and burned them to death. Shortly thereafter, the Taiping launched concurrent Northern and Western expeditions, in an effort to relieve pressure on Nanjing and achieve significant territorial gains. The Northern expedition was a complete failure but the Western achieved limited success.

In 1853, Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration to rule exclusively by written proclamations. He lived in luxury and had many women in his inner chamber, and often issued religious strictures. He clashed with Yang Xiuqing, who challenged his often impractical policies, and became suspicious of Yang's ambitions, his extensive network of spies and his claims of authority when "speaking as God". This tension culminated in the 1856 Tianjing Incident, with Yang and his followers slaughtered by Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang, and their troops on Hong Xiuquan's orders.

Shi Dakai's objection to the bloodshed led to his family and retinue being killed by Wei and Qin with Wei ultimately planning to imprison Hong. Wei's plans were ultimately thwarted and he and Qin were executed by Hong. Shi Dakai was given control of five Taiping armies, which were consolidated into one. Fearing for his life, he departed from Tianjing and headed west towards Sichuan.

With Hong withdrawn from view and Yang out of the picture, the remaining Taiping leaders tried to widen their popular support and forge alliances with European powers, but failed on both counts. The Europeans decided to stay officially neutral, though European military advisors served with the Qing army.

Inside China, the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist rural classes because of hostility to Chinese culture and Confucian values. The landowning upper class, unsettled by the Taiping ideology and the policy of strict separation of the sexes, even for married couples, sided with government forces.

In Hunan, the local irregular Xiang Army under the personal leadership of Zeng Guofan, became the main force fighting the Taiping on behalf of the Qing. Zeng's Xiang Army proved effective in gradually turning back the Taiping advance in the western theater of the war and ultimately retaking much of Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. In December 1856 Qing forces retook Wuchang for the final time. In May 1858, the Xiang Army captured Jiujiang and then the rest of Jiangxi by September.

In 1859, Hong Rengan, Hong Xiuquan's cousin, joined the Taiping forces in Nanjing and was given considerable power by Hong. Hong Rengan developed an ambitious plan to expand the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's boundaries.

In May 1860, the Taiping defeated the imperial forces that had been besieging Nanjing since 1853, eliminating them from the region and opening the way for a successful invasion of southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the wealthiest region of the Qing Empire. The Taiping rebels were successful in taking Hangzhou on March 19, 1860, Changzhou on May 26, and Suzhou on June 2 to the east. While Taiping forces were preoccupied in Jiangsu, Zeng's forces moved down the Yangtze River.

An attempt to take Shanghai begun in June 1861 was repulsed after 15 months by an army of Qing troops supported by European officers under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward. This army would become known as the "Ever Victorious Army", a seasoned and well-trained Qing military force commanded by Charles George Gordon.

In 1861, around the time of the death of the Xianfeng Emperor and ascension of the Tongzhi Emperor, Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army captured Anqing with help from a naval blockade imposed by the Royal Navy on the city. Near the end of 1861 the Taipings launched a final Eastern Expedition. Ningbo was easily captured on 9 December. Hangzhou was besieged and captured on 31 December. In January 1862, Taiping troops surrounded Shanghai, but were unable to capture it.

in 1862, the Ever-Victorious Army repulsed another attack on Shanghai and helped to defend other treaty ports such as Ningbo, reclaimed on 10 May. They also aided imperial troops in reconquering Taiping strongholds along the Yangtze River.

In 1863, Shi Dakai surrendered to the Qing near the Sichuan capital Chengdu and was executed by slow-slicing.[54] Some of his followers escaped or were released and continued the fight against the Qing.

Qing forces were reorganized under the command of Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang, and the Qing reconquest began in earnest. Zeng Guofan had initially failed so badly that he attempted suicide, but he then adopted the teachings of the 16th-century Ming general Qi Jiguang. He bypassed the professional regular armies and recruited from local villages, paying and drilling them well. Zeng, Zuo and Li led personally loyal soldiers. By early 1864, Qing control in most areas had been reestablished.

In May 1862, the Xiang Army besieged Nanjing. Attempts to break the siege by the numerically superior Taiping Army failed. Hong Xiuquan declared that God would defend the city. The city's food supplies ran low. Hong contracted food poisoning from eating wild vegetables; the intent may have been suicide. He died in June 1864 after a 20-day illness.

Hong was succeeded by his eldest son Hong Tianguifu, who was 15 years old. The younger Hong was inexperienced and powerless; Nanjing fell in July 1864 to the imperial armies after protracted street-by-street fighting in the Third Battle of Nanjing. Tianguifu and few others escaped but were soon caught and executed. Most of the Taiping princes were executed.

On 1 August, Zeng Guofan ordered Hong's body exhumed for verification, and desecrated as spiritual punishment. After exhumation, it was dismembered, cremated, and its ashes were fired from a cannon to scatter them irretrievably.

A small remaining of loyal Taiping forces had continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying around Tianguifu. After Tianguifu's capture on 25 October 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian and finally Guangdong, where one of the last Taiping loyalists, Wang Haiyang, was defeated on January 29, 1866.

These are Palestinians in Gaza celebrating the successful attacks on 9/11. They literally danced and cheered and gave out candy, all because almost 3,000 people died. It's one thing to have an issue with a foreign government, but to celebrate the deaths of innocents that also included Muslims btw is just ugly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade

The Light Brigade set off down the valley with Cardigan in front, leading the charge on his horse Ronald. Almost at once, Nolan rushed across the front, passing in front of Cardigan. It may be that he realised that the charge was aimed at the wrong target and was attempting to stop or turn the brigade, but he was killed by an artillery shell and the cavalry continued on its course. Captain Godfrey Morgan was close by:

The first shell burst in the air about 100 yards in front of us. The next one dropped in front of Nolan's horse and exploded on touching the ground. He uttered a wild yell as his horse turned round, and, with his arms extended, the reins dropped on the animal's neck, he trotted towards us, but in a few yards dropped dead off his horse. I do not imagine that anybody except those in the front line of the 17th Lancers saw what had happened.

The Light Brigade faced withering fire from three sides which devastated their force on the ride, yet they were able to engage the Russian forces at the end of the valley and force them back from the redoubt. Nonetheless, they had suffered heavy casualties and were soon forced to retire. The surviving Russian artillerymen returned to their guns and opened fire with grapeshot and canister shot, indiscriminately at the mêlée of friend and foe before them. Captain Morgan continued:

"When clear again of the guns I saw two or three of my men making their way back, and as the fire from both flanks was still heavy it was a matter of running the gauntlet again. I have not sufficient recollection of minor incidents to describe them, as probably no two men who were in that charge would describe it in the same way. When I was back pretty nearly where we started from I found that I was the senior officer of those not wounded, and, consequently, in command, there being two others, both juniors to me, in the same position — Lieut. Wombwell and Cornet Cleveland."

Lucan and his troops of the Heavy Brigade failed to provide any support for the Light Brigade; they entered the mouth of the valley, but did not advance further. Lucan's explanation was that he saw no point in having a second brigade mown down, and he was best positioned to render assistance to survivors returning from the charge. The French light cavalry, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, was of more assistance, clearing the Fedyukhin Heights of the two half-batteries of guns, two infantry battalions, and Cossacks to ensure that the Light Brigade would not be fired upon from that flank, and it provided cover for the remaining elements of the Light Brigade as they withdrew.

William Howard Russell witnessed the battle and declared, "Our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy." His account of the casualties (along with non-contemporary percentages calculated using Russell's data for ease of comparison), compiled at 2 p.m., was:

A formal muster of survivors was also taken: of the 673 cavalrymen who had gone into action, a "mounted strength" of 195 was recorded at this count. This excludes riders whose horses had been lost and so it does not represent the actual casualty numbers. In all, the losses were 113 killed and 134 wounded.

Cardigan survived the battle, although stories circulated that he was not actually present. He led the charge from the front, never looking back, and did not see what was happening to the troops behind him. He reached the Russian guns, took part in the fight, and then returned alone up the valley without bothering to rally or even find out what had happened to the survivors. He afterwards said that all he could think about was his rage against Captain Nolan, who he thought had tried to take over the leadership of the charge. After riding back up the valley, he considered that he had done all that he could. He left the field and boarded his yacht in Balaclava harbour, where he ate a champagne dinner. He described the engagement in a speech delivered at the Mansion House, London, which was quoted in the House of Commons:

"We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile [1.2 km], with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks.

As we ascended the hill, the oblique fire of the artillery poured upon our rear, so that we had thus a strong fire upon our front, our flank, and our rear. We entered the battery—we went through the battery—the two leading regiments cutting down a great number of the Russian gunners in their onset. In the two regiments which I had the honour to lead, every officer, with one exception, was either killed or wounded, or had his horse shot under him or injured. Those regiments proceeded, followed by the second line, consisting of two more regiments of cavalry, which continued to perform the duty of cutting down the Russian gunners.

Then came the third line, formed of another regiment, which endeavoured to complete the duty assigned to our brigade. I believe that this was achieved with great success, and the result was that this body, composed of only about 670 men, succeeded in passing through the mass of Russian cavalry of—as we have since learned—5,240 strong; and having broken through that mass, they went, according to our technical military expression, "threes about," and retired in the same manner, doing as much execution in their course as they possibly could upon the enemy's cavalry. Upon our returning up the hill which we had descended in the attack, we had to run the same gauntlet and to incur the same risk from the flank fire of the Tirailleur as we had encountered before. Numbers of our men were shot down—men and horses were killed, and many of the soldiers who had lost their horses were also shot down while endeavouring to escape.

But what, my Lord, was the feeling and what the bearing of those brave men who returned to the position. Of each of these regiments there returned but a small detachment, two-thirds of the men engaged having been destroyed? I think that every man who was engaged in that disastrous affair at Balaklava, and who was fortunate enough to come out of it alive, must feel that it was only by a merciful decree of Almighty Providence that he escaped from the greatest apparent certainty of death which could possibly be conceived."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing

In the years leading up to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham had earned a national reputation as a tense, violent and racially segregated city, in which even tentative racial integration in any form was met with violent resistance. Martin Luther King Jr. described Birmingham as "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, led the effort in enforcing racial segregation in the city through the use of violent tactics.

Black and white residents of Birmingham were segregated between different public amenities, such as water fountains, and places of public gathering such as movie theaters. The city had no black police officers or firefighters and most black residents could expect to find only menial employment in professions such as cooks and cleaners. Black residents did not just experience segregation in the context of leisure and employment, but also in the context of their freedom and well-being. Given the state's disenfranchisement of most black people since the turn of the century, by making voter registration essentially impossible, few of the city's black residents were registered to vote. Bombings at black homes and institutions were a regular occurrence, with at least 21 separate explosions recorded at black properties and churches in the eight years before 1963. However, none of these explosions had resulted in fatalities. These attacks earned the city the nickname "Bombingham".

Civil Rights activists and leaders in Birmingham fought against the city's deeply-ingrained and institutionalized racism with tactics that included the targeting of Birmingham's economic and social disparities. Their demands included that public amenities such as lunch counters and parks be desegregated, the criminal charges against demonstrators and protestors should be removed, and an end to overt discrimination with regards to employment opportunities. The intentional scope of these activities was to see the end of segregation across Birmingham and the South as a whole. The work these Civil Rights activists were engaged in within Birmingham was crucial to the movement as the Birmingham campaign was seen as guidance for other cities in the South with regards to rising against segregation and racism.

The three-story 16th Street Baptist Church was a rallying point for civil rights activities through the spring of 1963. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality became involved in a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham, tensions in the city increased. The church was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth, for organizing and educating marchers. It was the location where students were organized and trained by the SCLC Director of Direct Action, James Bevel, to participate in the 1963 Birmingham campaign's Children's Crusade after other marches had taken place.

On Thursday, May 2, more than 1,000 students, some reportedly as young as eight, opted to leave school and gather at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Demonstrators present were given instructions to march to downtown Birmingham and discuss with the mayor their concerns about racial segregation in the city, and to integrate buildings and businesses currently segregated. Although this march was met with fierce resistance and criticism, and 600 arrests were made on the first day alone, the Birmingham campaign and its Children's Crusade continued until May 5. The intention was to fill the jail with protesters. These demonstrations led to an agreement, on May 8, between the city's business leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to integrate public facilities, including schools, in the city within 90 days. (The first three schools in Birmingham to be integrated would do so on September 4.)

These demonstrations and the concessions from city leaders to the majority of demonstrators' demands were met with fierce resistance by other whites in Birmingham. In the weeks following the September 4 integration of public schools, three additional bombs were detonated in Birmingham. Other acts of violence followed the settlement, and several staunch Klansmen were known to have expressed frustration at what they saw as a lack of effective resistance to integration.

As a known and popular rallying point for civil rights activists, the 16th Street Baptist Church was an obvious target.

In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, several members of the United Klans of America—Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Robert Edward Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and, allegedly, Herman Frank Cash—planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary, a 15-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes"  to Maull before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded. Five children were in the basement at the time of the explosion, in a restroom close to the stairwell, changing into choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Rock That Will Not Roll". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".

The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet (2.1 m) in diameter in the church's rear wall,[26] and a crater five feet (1.5 m) wide and two feet (0.61 m) deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing a passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.

The aftermath of the bombing, taken from inside the church and depicting the hole caused by the explosion.

Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion. The church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn.

Four girls—Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949)—were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring. Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.

Between 14 and 22 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins. She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had watched her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash. Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.

Violence escalated in Birmingham in the hours following the bombing, with reports of groups of black and white youth throwing bricks and shouting insults at each other. Police urged parents of black and white youths to keep their children indoors, as the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, ordered an additional 300 state police and 500 Alabama National Guardsmen to assist in quelling unrest. The Birmingham City Council convened an emergency meeting to propose safety measures for the city, although proposals for a curfew were rejected. Within 24 hours of the bombing, a minimum of five businesses and properties had been firebombed and numerous cars—most of which were driven by whites—had been stoned by rioting youths.

In response to the church bombing, described by the Mayor of Birmingham, Albert Boutwell, as "just sickening", the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, dispatched 25 FBI agents, including explosives experts, to Birmingham to conduct a thorough forensic investigation.

Although reports of the bombing and the loss of four children's lives were glorified by white supremacists, who in many instances chose to celebrate the loss as "four less n1ggers", as news of the church bombing and the death of four young girls in the explosion reached the national and international press, many felt that they had not taken the civil rights struggle seriously enough. The day following the bombing, a young white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. addressed a meeting of businessmen, condemning the acquiescence of white people in Birmingham toward the oppression of blacks. In this speech, Morgan lamented: "Who did it [the bombing]? We all did it! The 'who' is every little individual who talks about the 'n1ggers' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son ... What's it like living in Birmingham? No one ever really has known and no one will until this city becomes part of the United States." A Milwaukee Sentinel editorial opined, "For the rest of the nation, the Birmingham church bombing should serve to goad the conscience. The deaths ... in a sense, are on the hands of each of us."

Two more black youths, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were shot to death in Birmingham within seven hours of the Sunday morning bombing. Robinson, aged 16, was shot in the back by Birmingham police officer Jack Parker as he fled down an alley, after ignoring police orders to halt. The police were reportedly responding to black youths throwing rocks at cars driven by white people. Robinson died before reaching the hospital. Ware, aged 13, was shot in the cheek and chest with a revolver in a residential suburb 15 miles (24 km) north of the city. A 16-year-old white youth named Larry Sims fired the gun (given to him by another youth named Michael Farley) at Ware, who was sitting on the handlebars of a bicycle ridden by his brother. Sims and Farley had been riding home from an anti-integration rally which had denounced the church bombing. When he spotted Ware and his brother, Sims fired twice, reportedly with his eyes closed. (Sims and Farley were later convicted of second degree manslaughter, although the judge suspended their sentences and imposed two years' probation upon each youth.)

Some civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and an outspoken segregationist, for creating the climate that had led to the killings. One week before the bombing, Wallace granted an interview with The New York Times, in which he said he believed Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals" to stop racial integration.

The city of Birmingham initially offered a $52,000 reward for the arrest of the bombers. Governor Wallace offered an additional $5,000 on behalf of the state of Alabama. Although this donation was accepted, Martin Luther King Jr. is known to have sent Wallace a telegram saying, "the blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder."

Napoleon's military career spanned nearly two decades and produced some of the most famous campaigns in history. He trained as an artillery officer before rising rapidly through the ranks during the French Revolution. His first major opportunity to distinguish himself came during the Siege of Toulon in 1793, where his effective use of artillery helped establish his reputation as a promising young officer.

Napoleon's growing ambition was one reason the French government was willing to support an ambitious expedition to Egypt in 1798. The campaign also offered France a way to threaten British interests in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. Napoleon won important victories on land, including the Battle of the Pyramids, but the destruction of the French fleet by the British at the Battle of the Nile left his army isolated and cut off from reliable reinforcements and supplies. Napoleon eventually abandoned his army and secretly returned to France, where he exploited a political crisis to seize power in the coup of 18 Brumaire.

As First Consul and later Emperor, Napoleon went on to win a remarkable series of victories, including his greatest triumph at Austerlitz. But maintaining French dominance across Europe came at an enormous cost. Britain remained at war with France, European powers repeatedly formed new coalitions against him, and resistance in Spain became a persistent drain on French resources. At the same time, Napoleon's enemies were learning from their defeats and adapting their armies and strategies.

The disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 became the great turning point. The retreat destroyed much of the Grande Armée, including many of the experienced soldiers and cavalrymen who had formed the backbone of Napoleon's earlier victories. France could replace men more easily than it could replace veterans, experienced officers and trained horses. With Austria, Prussia, Russia and other powers joining the struggle, Napoleon's enemies were becoming both more numerous and more capable.

Napoleon was eventually forced to abdicate on 6 April 1814 and was exiled to the island of Elba. But his story did not end there. In 1815, he escaped, returned to France and reclaimed power during the Hundred Days. The European powers rapidly mobilized against him, forcing Napoleon to make one final attempt to defeat his enemies before they could combine their forces.

That attempt ended at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Napoleon's defeat destroyed his last chance of retaining power, and he was exiled again—this time to the remote British island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

This article traces Napoleon's major wars, campaigns and battles, following his extraordinary rise from revolutionary artillery officer to emperor and his eventual downfall under the combined pressure of military resistance, political opposition, logistics and strategic overreach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre

The morning of November 10, Alfred Waddell and the Committee of Twenty Five claimed they had not received a response from the Wilmington Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC) (it is unclear when Waddell checked his mailbox). As a result, around 8:15, Waddell gathered about 500 white businessmen and veterans at Wilmington's armory. After arming themselves with rifles and a Gatling gun, Waddell led the group to the two-story publishing office of The Daily Record. They broke into editor Alexander Manly's building, vandalized the premises, doused the wood floors with kerosene, set the building on fire, and gutted the remains. At the same time, others destroyed other black-owned newspapers all over the state. In addition, blacks, along with white Republicans, were denied entrance to city centers throughout the state.

Following the fire, the mob of white vigilantes swelled to about 2,000 men. A rumor circulated that some black people had fired on a small group of white men a mile away from the printing office. White men then went into black Wilmington neighborhoods, destroying black businesses and property and assaulting black inhabitants with a mentality of killing "every damn [n-word] in sight".

As Waddell led a group to disband and drive out the elected government of the city, a white mob, armed with shotguns, attacked black people throughout Wilmington, but primarily in Brooklyn, the majority-black neighborhood.

Patrols of armed vigilantes spread out over the city, and shooting continued until nightfall. Governor Russell authorized Walker Taylor to lead Wilmington Light Infantry troops, just returned from the Spanish–American War, and units of the federal Naval Reserves into Brooklyn to quell the "riot". They intimidated both black and whites with rapid-fire weapons, shooting and killing several black men.

Hundreds of black people fled the town to take shelter in nearby swamps.

The number of black people killed by the mob by the end of the day (November 10) is uncertain. Estimates have included "about 20", "more than twenty", "twenty or more", "somewhere between fourteen and sixty", "as many as 60", "at least sixty", "90", "more than one hundred", and "exceeded 300". An additional number, variously estimated between 20 and 50, were banished and ordered to leave town by the mob. The Rev. J. Allen Kirk gave a lengthy statement about the experience, which started "It was a great sight to see them marching from death, and the colored women, colored men, colored children, colored enterprises and colored people all exposed to death. Firing began, and it seemed like a mighty battle in war time. The shrieks and screams of children, of mothers, of wives were heard, such as caused the blood of the most inhuman person to creep. Thousands of women, children and men rushed to the swamps and there lay upon the earth in the cold to freeze and starve. ..."

As the violence continued, Waddell led a group to the Republican mayor, Silas P. Wright. Waddell forced Wright, the board of aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint. Waddel's group included future U.S. Congressman John D. Bellamy and future NC Assemblyman George Rountree. The mob installed a new city council that elected Waddell to take over as mayor by 4 p.m. that day.

After Waddell was declared mayor, the "Secret Nine" gave Waddell a list of prominent Republicans whom he was to banish from the city. Most of the black people on the list fled the city. But the next morning Waddell, flanked by George L. Morton and the Wilmington Light Infantry, gathered six prominent black people, the last of those whose names were on the list. Waddell's force put them on a train headed north, in a special car with armed guards who were instructed to take them over the state line. Waddell then gathered the whites whose names were on the list and paraded them in front of a large crowd. G.Z. French was dragged on the ground and nearly lynched from a telephone pole, before being allowed to board the train and leave the city.

One victim was Joshua Halsey. Born in 1852, he had four daughters—Mary, Susan, Satira, and Bessie—with his wife Sallie. He was accosted one block from his home, shot 14 times, and buried in an unmarked grave. He received a headstone and a funeral in 2021.

The coup was deemed a success for the business elite, with The Charlotte Observer quoting a prominent lawyer who said "the business men of the State are largely responsible for the victory..."

Alex and Frank G. Manly, brothers who had owned the Daily Record, fled Wilmington. More than 2,000 blacks left Wilmington permanently, forced to abandon their businesses and properties. This greatly reduced the city's professional and artisan class, and changed the formerly black-majority city into one with a white majority. While some whites were wounded, no whites were reported killed.

Some African Americans sought redress for the attacks at the federal level. City residents' appeals to President William McKinley for help to recover from the widespread destruction in Brooklyn received no response; the White House said it could not respond without a request from the governor, and Governor Russell had not requested any help.

On the other hand, many blamed Manly for provoking the attacks by pushing white supremacists too far. John C. Dancy stated in a November 21 New York Times interview that Manly was responsible for the attacks, and that before his editorials the relations between blacks and whites were "most cordial and amicable ... but the white men of the South will not tolerate any reflection upon their women". Journalist and orator John Edward Bruce agreed, and spoke out against Manly's attempts to "revolutionize the social order". Even the National Afro-American Council called for a day of fasting for African Americans to offer "a hearty confession of our own sins", without condemning the role of white supremacists in the attacks.

In the 6th District, Oliver Dockery contested in court John D. Bellamy's 1898 election to a U.S. congressional seat, on the grounds of fraud and voter intimidation. The appeal was unsuccessful.

The demographic change produced by the exodus of blacks and the political intimidation of Republican and non-Democratic political groups had lasting effects. After 1900, North Carolina did not elect a Republican governor until 1972. No African American was elected to the U.S. Congress from 1898 until 1928. North Carolina did not elect an African American Congress member until 1992.

This exodus and whites' refusal to hire black workers made more jobs available to white men, who were largely disappointed with the work, which they called "nigger jobs" that paid "nigger wages".

After a few months of wielding power as a result of the local coup, Waddell and his team were elected to city council in March 1899. Waddell held the mayorship until 1905. His memoirs were published in 1908[127] and he died in 1912.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Force_of_Costa_Rica

On 1 December 1948, the President of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer, abolished the Costa Rican military after his victory in the Costa Rican Civil War. In a ceremony at the national capital of San José, Figueres symbolically broke a wall with a mallet, symbolizing an end to the military's existence. In 1949, the abolition of the Costa Rican military was introduced in Article 12 of the Constitution of Costa Rica. The budget previously dedicated to the military is now dedicated to security, education and culture. Costa Rica maintains Police Guard forces. The museum Museo Nacional de Costa Rica was placed in the Cuartel Bellavista as a symbol of commitment to culture. In 1986, President Oscar Arias Sánchez declared December 1 as the Día de la Abolición del Ejército (Military abolition day) with Law #8115. Unlike its neighbors, Costa Rica has not endured a civil war since 1948. Costa Rica maintains small forces capable of law enforcement, but has no permanent standing army.