1974 — The Carnation Revolution

On April 25, 1974, junior officers of Portugal's Armed Forces Movement rolled tanks into Lisbon and toppled Europe's longest-running dictatorship, almost without firing a shot. Civilians placed red carnations in the soldiers' gun barrels, giving the revolution its name. The streets filled, the regime fell, and a flower became the emblem of a dictatorship ending in a single, largely peaceful day.

The officers' real target was Portugal's unwinnable colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Within eighteen months, five African nations were free. A revolution in Lisbon thus redrew the map of Africa, ending an empire from its own capital.