The Boshin War was a civil war in Japan, fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and those seeking to return political power to the imperial court. The war found its origins in dissatisfaction among many nobles and young samurai with the Shogunate's handling of foreigners following the opening of Japan the prior decade. An alliance of southern samurai and court officials secured the cooperation of the young Emperor Meiji, who declared the abolition of the two-hundred-year-old Shogunate. Military movements by imperial forces and partisan violence in Edo led Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the sitting shogun, to launch a military campaign to seize the emperor's court at Kyoto. The military tide rapidly turned in favor of the smaller but relatively modernized imperial faction, and after a series of battles culminating in the surrender of Edo, Yoshinobu personally surrendered. The Tokugawa remnant retreated to northern Honshū and later to Hokkaidō, where they founded the Ezo republic. Defeat at the Battle of Hakodate broke this last holdout and left the imperial rule supreme throughout the whole of Japan, completing the military phase of the Meiji Restoration. Around 120,000 men were mobilized during the conflict, and of these about 3,500 were killed.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boshin_War

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1787: German-born British astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered the Uranian moons Oberon and Titania. They were later named by his son John after the King and the Queen of the Faeries from William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, respectively. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_%28moon%29)

1922: Insulin was first administered to a human patient with diabetes at the Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Canada. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin)

1923: Troops from France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr Area to force the German Weimar Republic to pay its reparation payments in the aftermath of World War I. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Ruhr)

1964: In a landmark report, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry issued the warning that smoking may be hazardous for one's health, concluding that it has a causative role in lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and other illnesses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Leonidas_Terry)

1986: The Gateway Bridge in Brisbane, Australia, at the time the longest prestressed concrete free cantilever bridge in the world, opened. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Bridge%2C_Brisbane)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

malodorous: Having a bad odor. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malodorous)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. -- William James (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James)