Tank Man

Fearing his work would be confiscated, Newsweek’s Charlie Cole put the roll of film on which he’d captured his version of “The Tank Man” — that image seen in so many newspapers of a young man who walked in front of a tank and stood, bringing the tank to a halt — “in a plastic film can and wrapped it in a plastic bag and attached it to the flush chain in the tank of the toilet” in his hotel.

Tank Man — his identity has never been determined — shot to worldwide fame that day for stopping those tanks, hours after they had brutally crushed student-led protests on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Hundreds — possibly thousands — died in the early-hours protest on June 4, 1989, an event that still remains a forbidden topic in Communist-governed China.

Pictures of Tank Man's courageous efforts and other information about the crackdown are still officially censored in China. But now, 20 years on, modern technology and the wide reach of social networking sites like Facebook are providing curious students with the information they were previously denied. "For 20 years, more than a few have entered the political arena who are the real villains, hypocrites who put on a false show of great peace and bury their consciences in a fiery pit.