Shitao or Shi Tao, born into the Ming dynasty imperial clan as Zhu Ruoji, was a Chinese landscape painter in the early Qing Dynasty.

Born in Quanzhou County in Guangxi province, Shitao was a member of the royal house descended from the elder brother of Zhu Yuanzhang. He narrowly avoided catastrophe in 1644 when the Ming Dynasty fell to invading Manchus and civil rebellion. Having escaped by chance from the fate to which his lineage would have assigned him, He assumed the name Yuanji Shitao no later than 1651 when he became a Buddhist monk.

He moved from Wuchang, where he began his religious instruction, to Anhui in the 1660s. Throughout the 1680s he lived in Nanjing and Yangzhou, and in 1690 he moved to Beijing to find patronage for his promotion within the monastic system. Frustrated by his failure to find a patron, Shitao converted to Daoism in 1693 and returned to Yangzhou where he remained until his death in 1707. In his late years, he is said to have greeted Kangxi Emperor visiting Yangzhou. Geyuan Garden grows Chinese bamboo variations that Shitao himself loved.

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri, born Kimathi wa Waciuri, was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau Uprising. Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his execution in 1957.

Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953. He along with Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima was one of three Field Marshals. His capture in 1956 and execution the next year led to the decline of the uprising against the British colonial government. Before his execution, he wrote that he was "...so busy and so happy preparing for heaven tomorrow."

Kenyan nationalists view him as the heroic figurehead of the Kenyan freedom struggle against British colonial rule, while the British government saw him as a terrorist. Despite being viewed with disdain by the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi governments, Kimathi and his fellow Mau Mau rebels have been officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence since the Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kimathi statue in 2007.

The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 29 December 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia included students and older dissidents. The result was the end of 41 years of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent dismantling of the command economy and conversion to a parliamentary republic.

On 17 November 1989, riot police suppressed a student demonstration in Prague. The event marked the 50th anniversary of a violently suppressed demonstration against the Nazi storming of Prague University in 1939 where 1,200 students were arrested and 9 killed. The 1989 event sparked a series of demonstrations from 17 November to late December and turned into an anti-communist demonstration. On 20 November, the number of protesters assembled in Prague grew from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated 500,000. The entire top leadership of the Communist Party, including General Secretary Miloš Jakeš, resigned on 24 November. On 27 November, a two-hour general strike involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia was held.