Revolutions

Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance transformed the Indian independence movement and provided a model for social change that inspired movements from the American Civil Rights struggle to anti-apartheid campaigns.

From Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black Americans and their allies forced the United States to live up to its founding promise of equality.

The Berlin Wall, built overnight in August 1961, became the most potent symbol of the Cold War's division of the world. Its fall on 9 November 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet era.

Between 1810 and 1826, Simon Bolivar led one of the most ambitious military campaigns in history, liberating six countries from Spanish colonial rule and dreaming of a unified South American republic.

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history, producing the world's first Black republic and the first nation born of a slave rebellion.

After 46 years of state-sanctioned racial segregation and three decades of armed resistance, South Africa held its first fully democratic election on 27 April 1994.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power in Russia, ending centuries of tsarist rule and establishing the world's first communist state.

Between 1789 and 1799, the French people overthrew the monarchy, executed the king, and experimented with republican government in the most radical political upheaval in modern European history.

In 1868, Japan ended two and a half centuries of feudal isolation and launched the most dramatic national transformation in modern history, becoming an industrial and military power within a single generation.

Between 1775 and 1783, thirteen British colonies in North America fought and won their independence, founding a republic whose ideals of liberty and self-government would inspire revolutions around the world for the next two centuries.