A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in
Hungary was viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on
November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and
nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands
of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic
political system and freedom from Soviet oppression.

The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian
revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule. He also announced
that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet
bloc’s equivalent of NATO).

Imre Nagy ( 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958)

April 19, 1775: At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into
Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, a shot was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud
of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others
were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the
American Revolution had begun.

John Parker
(July 13, 1729 – September 17, 1775)

Battle of Lexington State Historic Site today.

Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in the
streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary “People’s Will” group. The People’s Will, organized
in 1879, employed terrorism and assassination in their attempt to overthrow Russia’s czarist autocracy. They murdered officials
and made several attempts on the czar’s life before finally
assassinating him on March 13, 1881.

In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of
Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) began on March 8, 1917
when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in
Petrograd. One week later, centuries of czarist rule in Russia
ended with the abdication of Nicholas II, and Russia took a
dramatic step closer toward communist revolution.

By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability
of the czarist regime. Government corruption was rampant, the
Russian economy remained backward, and Nicholas repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the Russian parliament established after
the Revolution of 1905, when it opposed his will. However, the
immediate cause of the February Revolution—the first phase of
the Russian Revolution of 1917—was Russia’s disastrous
involvement in World War I.

TIM MAGUIRE

Billy Graham (William Franklin Graham Jr.)
(November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018)

Rev. Graham was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who
became well known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of  the 20th century.