It's too bad. Best wishes, John Green. So the 1911 revolution that led to the end of the Qing dynasty started when a bomb accidentally exploded, at which point the revolutionaries were like, we're probably going to be outed, so we should just start the uprising now. The uprising probably would have been quelled, like many had before, except this time the army joined the rebellion because they wanted to become more modern. The Qing emperor abdicated and the rebels chose a general, Yuan Shikai, as leader, while Sun Yat-sen was declared president of a provisional republic on January 1st, 1912. A new government was created, with a senate and a lower house, and it was supposed to write a new constitution. And after the first election, Sun Yat-sen's party, the Guomindang, were the largest, but they weren't the majority.