China's Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising
On this day · 10 October 1911
On October 10, 1911, mutinying soldiers in Wuchang sparked a revolt that ended more than two thousand years of Chinese imperial rule.
An accidental bomb explosion on October 9, 1911 exposed a revolutionary cell in Wuchang, in central China. Rather than wait to be arrested, the conspirators struck the next evening. On October 10, 1911, soldiers of the Qing dynasty’s own New Army mutinied, seizing arsenals, government offices, and strategic points across the city.
The rebellion — the Wuchang Uprising — lit the fuse of the Xinhai Revolution, named for the year in the Chinese calendar. Telegrams went out urging other provinces to break away, and within weeks eighteen provinces had renounced the Qing.
The dynasty that had ruled since 1644 had only a few months left.
On January 1, 1912, the Republic of China was declared, with Sun Yat-sen as provisional president, ending more than two millennia of imperial dynasties. The date is still marked annually as Double Tenth Day — the tenth day of the tenth month.
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