A red flag is waved in Beijing by students demanding political reform in 1989
Dic Penderyn is the better-known alias of Welsh working-class hero Richard Lewis, one of 28 people tried on charges connected with the Merthyr Rising of June 1831, when iron and coal workers took control of the Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfil. The event is regarded as the first politicized uprising in Britain, as well as the first time in history that a red flag was used as a symbol of revolt.
But whereas many of his comrades were transported to Australia or sentenced to hard labor, Penderyn was accused of stabbing a soldier, in addition to his rioting charge. Despite a lack of evidence — the soldier didn't even identify Penderyn as the man who wounded him — he was convicted and hanged in the Welsh capital of Cardiff in 1831, at the age of just 23. His last words were supposedly, "Oh Lord, what an injustice!" and it looks as though he was right: in 1874, a man named Ianto Parker confessed on his death bed that it was he who had actually stabbed the soldier.