23-year-old Rangoon student Aung San, later the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, becomes general secretary of a freedom party, Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Union)

Aung San and some revolutionary colleagues (the Thirty Comrades) receive military training in Japan, aiming to evict the British from Burma

Burmese politician Aung San raises a Burma Independence Army in Thailand to support the imminent Japanese invasion of his country

Aung San's Burma Independence Army enters Burma as part of the Japanese invasion

Burma becomes the last in the series of important southeast Asian territories to fall into Japanese hands

William Slim gets the remaining British forces back to India from Burma, in a fighting withdrawal that lasts two months

British general William Slim is appointed to command the Fourteenth Army, formed specifically for the campaign to recover Burma

William Slim secures the first Allied victories in the Burma campaign, at Imphal and Kohima in northeast India

Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is born in Rangoon

William Slim drives the Japanese from Mandalay and moves on south to take Rangoon

Aung San's army, now named the Burma National Army, changes sides in a surprise move and attacks the Japanese

Aung San's party, the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, wins a landslide victory in the Burmese election

33-year old Aung San, prime minister of Burma, and six of his ministers are assassinated during a cabinet meeting

U Saw, a political rival of Aung San in Burma, is hanged for having plotted his assassination

Aung San's widow, Ma Khin Kyi, moves with her children to Delhi, as Burma's ambassador to India

General Ne Win seizes power in a coup in Burma and establishes a single-party isolationist dictatorship

A peaceful demonstration at Rangoon university is dispersed by gunfire, resulting in the death of dozens of students

Foreign visits to Burma are restricted to three days (extended in the next decade to one week)

After graduating from college in India, Aung San Suu Kyi moves to England to continue her education at St Hugh's College in Oxford

Student demonstrations against Ne Win's rule become regular occurrences, suppressed with military violence

Aung San Ssu Kyi maries Michael Aris, an English academic specializing in the history of Buddhism

Most of the currency in circulation in Burma becomes worthless when Ne Win replaces it with new 45 and 90 kyat notes (he says 9 is is his lucky number)

A protest against the new Burmese currency escalates after the military kill a student activist, Maung Phone Maw, on the campus of Rangoon university

Students demonstrating in Rangoon are joined by civilians and monks in what becomes known as the 8888 Uprising (from the date, 8/8/88)

General Saw Maung seizes power in Burma and crushes the 8888 Uprising, by now nation-wide, with probably about 3000 deaths