Most explosive fact about CU.

Data for this list were defining a coup as the overthrow of the government by a rival political faction through illegal and typically violent means.

Coups, air carried out by one group of elites against another group of elites.

So they're distinct from revolutions, invasions, civil wars and uprisings, even though these all can overlap.

And sometimes life for the common people just goes on as normal.

That said, there are always exceptions.

Number five cu data are as old as ancient Greece and Rome.

They didn't call them coups then, but overthrowing governments is as old as governments themselves.

In ancient times, most countries either had kings or were republic, but sometimes would be rulers would usurp their own governments.

With a private army in Athens, the city was cud by a group of 400 aristocrats who were fed up with democracy.

They were replaced in another coup seven years later by a smaller, scarier group called the 30 tyrants.

Ancient Rome had its fair share of coups to Julius Caesar came to power in a coup and then was killed in one.

Coups continued happening through the Roman Empire China, Byzantium, Mongolia and they didn't stop.

Famous modern coup leaders like Napoleon, Franco and Mussolini are part of a venerable heritage of blood soaked ambition.

Number four coups are most common in Latin America and Africa.

If Latin America is an apartment, Spain was the worst roommate ever.

Even if they left 200 years ago, Spanish forces left a huge mess.

Dirty dishes, dust bunnies and unpaid bills in the form of weak economies and a legacy of racism and overpowered militaries.

After Spain lost control of its mismanaged colonies in the 18 twenties, the Onley powerful institution left was the army, and they used that power.

Most countries in Latin America have had a coup, and when you've done it once, it could apparently be hard to kick the habit.

Case in point.

Argentina, which between 1930 1976 had a coup every nine years or so, on average.

Still, for all Latin America's historical clout, it's the continent of Africa that's the modern pacesetter for coups, with over 200 occurring since the 19 sixties.

Number three Thailand is very coup prone.

Even today there are a handful of world leaders who took power by force, but many of them have stabilized and steered towards democracy.

And then there's Thailand has had 19 coups since 1932.

Yet on Lee, 25 democratic elections, the time military chronically tries to clean up government but is just a incompetent at running the country.

Civilian politics is made up of the red and yellow factions and the poor and the populists vs the middle class and the aristocracy.

The two political camps have nothing in common, and the Onley peacemakers have been the army and the monarchy.

Thailand's last coup was in 2014.

In 2019, the coups leader Prayuth Chan Ocha was elected prime minister in what was widely seen as an unfair race number two.

Most coups fail.

If all this has been pessimistic, here's some relief.

Coups are decreasing in frequency and most coups failed to make history.

Of course, there are some famous failed coups, like the gunpowder plot guy Fox Dastardly plan to blow up Protestant King James the first and replace him with a Catholic.

And then there's Adolf Hitler's 1923 beer hall putsch in Munich.

Hitler's innovation was to announce to the crowd that the revolution had already begun and they should join in.

Although he was able to lead his revolt to some success, the Nazi militias were soon defeated by police, the stopping Hitler once and for all, well until he ran for election 10 years later and seized control of Germany.

But that's another video altogether.

Number one, the US backed seven coups during the Cold War that we know of sometimes coups, air backed by foreign governments.

And when you need help overthrowing a government, no one does it better than the CIA.

From 1953 to 1973 the US overthrew the governments of Iran, Guatemala, Congo, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Brazil and Chile.

And that's just what they've admitted Thio.

Some of the governments overthrown were democratic, but all of them were vulnerable to being influenced by the U.

S.

Rival, the Soviet Union in Southeast Asia.

US puppets didn't last long.

The new South Vietnamese government would lose to the north, and US backed general law Knoll of Cambodia would rule for only five years.

But in Latin America US coup governments established brutal Dictatorships, setting back democracy for a generation.

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