In June, 1989, the Communist Party decided that the protests in Tiennamen Square should end, and they sent in the PLA. The world remembers one man, known as The Tank Man, because he had the bravery to face down a column of tanks. Alone. This is the image most of us remember.

This is what he was really facing.

The Original Velvet Revolution notes that we don’t know much about The Tank Man, but know some things about what he wasn’t.

He wasn’t some pampered, latte-drinking hipster with a smart phone riding the 2/3 down to the Village while ostentatiously “reading” a copy of Kapital and denouncing the “injustice” of the West.

But he wasn’t Jason Bourne or the Terminator either. So we know basically what happened to him: he made his last stand that day.