Date in year · 1949 · The 1940s

April 20, 1949

On April 20, 1949, amethyst incident: The People's Liberation Army attacks HMS Amethyst (F116) travelling to the British embassy in Nanjing during the Chinese Civil War. Spencer Haywood, Tommy Mottola, Holly Near would arrive in the same year.

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1949

1940s

Around 1949

The year in brief

1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1949th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 949th year of the 2nd millennium, the 49th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1940s decade.

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What happened

On April 20, 1949

  1. 1949 Amethyst incident: The People's Liberation Army attacks HMS Amethyst (F116) travelling to the British embassy in Nanjing during the Chinese Civil War.

    Chinese civil war incident

    The Amethyst incident, also known as the Yangtze incident, was a historic event that occurred on the Yangtze River for three months in the summer of 1949, during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War. The incident involved the Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), who were in the process of a river-crossing offensive to overthrow the Nationalist Government, and four British Royal Navy ships HMS Amethyst, HMS Black Swan, HMS Consort and HMS London. The British warships, whose claimed right of passage along the Yangtze had been unchallenged previously since the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin with the late Qing dynasty, came under bombardment by PLA artillery and were forced to withdraw permanently from Chinese territorial waters.

Elsewhere that year

Other moments from 1949

The class of 1949

Others born in 1949

Spencer Haywood 1949– American basketball player
Tommy Mottola 1949– American businessman and music publisher
Holly Near 1949– American folk singer and songwriter
Emanuel Ax 1949– Polish-American pianist and educator
Hildegard Falck 1949– German runner
Billy Joel 1949– American singer-songwriter and pianist

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