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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Escapades, and Other Lesser Known Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan January 21, 2020 33 min

William Carver - Butch Cassidy — Butch Cassidy, far right, The Sundance Kid, far left, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang. Wikimedia

32. The Red Eyebrows Who Roiled Ancient China

Yellow River flooding in 1887. Hakai Magazine

The Yellow River is the cradle of China’s civilization, but it was and remains a pretty unstable cradle, given to catastrophic course change and flooding. One such episode occurred between 2 and 11 AD, when the Yellow River underwent disastrous course changes that led to severe flooding. The result was a series of widespread famines, plus widespread dislocation and hardship.

Because misery loves company, the turmoil was made worse by a civil war, plus a massive peasant uprising known as the Red Eyebrows Rebellion. Fighting first erupted in 8 AD, when an imperial government official named Wang Mang overthrew the Early Han Dynasty which had reigned over China for two centuries. In its place, Wang Mang declared himself emperor and founded the short-lived Xin Dynasty.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.