China's 1911 revolution began with an accidental bomb

The Xinhai Revolution, which ended more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China, began with the Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911, when thousands of soldiers of the Qing dynasty’s own New Army in Wuchang — one of the three cities that now make up Wuhan — mutinied and seized the city’s military installations and government offices.

It started as an accident. The plotters, from two dissident groups called the Progressive Association and the Literature Society, had not intended to move that week at all:

• September 1911: They plan a revolt for the Mid-Autumn Festival on 6 October; preparations lag and it is postponed.
• 9 October: A bomb they are building in the city’s Russian concession goes off by mistake. Concession police find membership lists and planning documents among the damage.
• 10 October: With arrests under way, the troops strike first. By evening thousands are in revolt.
• October–December: The court recalls Yuan Shikai as premier, but province after province declares for the revolutionaries, who take Nanjing.
• 1 January 1912: Sun Yat-sen becomes provisional president of the new Republic of China.
• February 1912: With Yuan promised the presidency in return for backing a republic, the child emperor and the royal family abdicate.

Sun Yat-sen read about it in Denver

Not in China. The revolution’s best-known leader, who had spent years organising failed uprisings, was in Denver, Colorado, on a fundraising tour. He read about Wuchang in a newspaper at the Brown Palace Hotel, then went first to London and Paris to make sure neither power would back the Qing with money or arms. He reached China at Christmas, became president a week later, and soon stepped aside for Yuan, as he had promised by telegram.

The date survives as Double Tenth — the tenth day of the tenth month. The US State Department’s history calls 1911 only the first step in a process that needed the 1949 revolution, when Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic, to complete.