This photo triggered China’s Cultural Revolution
In 1966, Mao Zedong, China’s communist leader and the founder of the People’s Republic of China, was rumored to be in failing health. The devastating policies of his Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) — which forced millions of peasants to work tirelessly on government farming communes and by manufacturing crude steel — resulted in the greatest famine known to human history, costing anywhere between 23 and 55 million lives.
