A mutiny over a railway dispute ended 2,000 years of Chinese emperors

A botched bomb-making accident in Wuchang in October 1911 exposed a republican plot and forced soldiers into a mutiny they hadn't fully planned — it snowballed into the Xinhai Revolution. By February 1912, China's last emperor, six-year-old Puyi, abdicated, ending both the Qing dynasty and over two millennia of imperial rule.

— Wikipedia contributors, Xinhai Revolution — Historical overview of the 1911 revolution