Hey everyone Lauslle Montgomery again here with another China history podcast. I was thinking in this third episode of our little Cultural Revolution overview that at least we'd get through 1966 and into 1967, but that ain't going to happen today.

18 days is all we're advancing in this episode.

August 1966, Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.

Revolver was released.

John Lennon made his famous apology for saying the Beatles

were bigger than Jesus.

Vietnam War under LBJ was heating up,

yet all those devastating earthquakes that month in Turkey.

In August 1966 in China, Mao is going to unleash this monster he created called the Red Guards.

This is when it all starts.

This is when those massive rallies in Tiananmen Square

start to happen.

Parts one and two of this series sort of gave you a general idea about how this whole thing got set up and how all the groundwork was laid.

Now it's time for Mao Zedong, now pushing 73 years old to show off and get in front of his millions of

adoring fans and show everyone he could still shake it a few times.

Now is when one of the all-time great historical displays of megalomania, caught on film at least, is about to go down for all to see and enjoy. In the last couple episodes we saw how he

silenced his critics, stuffed the halls of power with like-minded individuals and

now he's playing with fire thinking he can kick up this massive

dust storm and at the same time keep everything under control.

He's going to launch the Chairman Mao Show and although he never lived to regret it he sure figures out it's easier to create chaos than to rein it in

August 1966 is when the gathering thundercloud start to turn this scary gray-black color.

An ominous blasts of lightning begin to appear that presages, this violent storm, not seen in China since who knows when. And so this man-made disaster, Mao's

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