January 1, 1959- Cuban revolution was completed after intense guerilla warfare under the leadership of Comandante Che Guevara and Fidel Castro who drove out US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
January 1, 1994- The Zapatista uprising began in Mexico. The indigenous people in Chiapas, Mexico declared war against the government leading to a 12-day armed rebellion. The uprising was led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional). They occupied buildings, and thousands of acres of land were seized.
January 2, 1989- Communist playwright and director Safdar Hashmi was brutally attacked on 1st January, 1989 by Indian National Congress party goons during his play called “Halla Bol” in Ghaziabad. He succumbed to his injuries the next day.
January 15, 1919- German communist revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were cruelly imprisoned and shot by Freikorps (a right-wing Paramilitary group) officers. Their bodies were dumped in Berlin’s Landwehr Canal and Berlin zoo respectively.
January 21, 1924- Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 54. He led the Bolsheviks to victory over the Czar in the October Revolution of 1917 establishing the world’s first socialist government.
January 30, 1968- Beginning of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam as North Vietnamese troops attacked 36 provincial capitals and 5 major cities in South Vietnam, including an attack on the US Embassy in Saigon and the presidential palace.
January 31, 1943- German troops surrendered at Stalingrad, marking the first defeat of Hitler’s armies in World War II.
