26Japanese Coup Attempt
Japan had no intention of surrendering after the nukes were dropped until emperor Hirohito stepped in. This made some generals so mad that they tried to stage a coup to overthrow the emperor to keep the war going.
27. On September 11, 1973, US-backed General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected leader of Chile, Salvadore Allende. Pinochet ordered an airstrike on the Presidential Palace and labor activists and famous folk guitarists were rounded up for torture, disappeared, and killed.
28. A man named Sam Zemurray started a highly profitable banana company by buying cheap leftover bananas from Honduras. After tax-free deals were threatened by collectors in the US, he planned and executed a successful coup of the Honduran government and saved his company.
29. The University of Paris existed for 820 years from 1150 A.D. to 1970, when it was broken up for being the main source of student revolutionaries who nearly overthrew the French government in May 1968.
30. In 1951, Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz carried out an agrarian reform under which uncultivated portions of large land-holdings were expropriated in return for compensation and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. The US disliked this and the CIA engineered a coup d'etat in 1954 for the benefit of an American fruit company.
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31Princess Sophie
Princess Sophie (of a minor German principality) married a Russian prince. Soon after he was crowned emperor, she overthrew him and crowned herself Empress Catherine the Great. She annexed most of Poland (then ruled by her former lover), helped modernize Russia, and started colonizing Alaska.
32. A revolt of textile workers in 14th century Florence led to the son of a washerwoman becoming president when he entered the palace barefoot and overthrew the oligarchic government. For 4 years, the republic was ruled almost entirely by middle-class artisans and shopkeepers.
33. The only coup in US history occurred in North Carolina in 1898. A mob of white supremacists armed with rifles and pistols marched on City Hall in Wilmington and overthrew the local government, forcing both black and white officials to resign. The leader of the mob was later elected as mayor.
34. In 1933, America’s most senior, most decorated Marine, General Smedley Butler, told the House of Representatives that wealthy businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a coup and install a fascist government.
35. Notorious mercenary Bob Denard was hired in 1975 to overthrow Ahmed Abdallah, president of Comoros. 3 years later Abdallah hired Denard to kick out his replacement, mad dictator Ali Soilih. 10 years later Soilih’s half-brother paid Denard to remove Abdallah again. All coups succeeded.
