Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a naval pay clerk whose debts would soon land the family in Marshalsea debtors' prison. That childhood trauma, including a stint laboring in a shoe-blacking factory at age twelve, became the raw material for novels like Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Dickens went on to become the Victorian era's most popular novelist and a fierce critic of industrial-age cruelty.

In early February 1912, negotiations between the imperial court and Yuan Shikai's provisional republican government reached their final stage, securing the abdication terms for China's last emperor, six-year-old Pu Yi. The agreement, formalized within days, ended the Qing dynasty and more than two millennia of imperial rule stretching back to Qin Shi Huang, ushering in the Republic of China amid warlordism and revolutionary upheaval.