October tenth is the National Day of the Republic of China, Taiwan's official name. It's often called Double Ten in Chinese, as it's the tenth day of the tenth month. People in Taiwan celebrate this day with parades and gatherings, and in Taiwan, of course, we usually get the day off.
Now the reason October tenth is celebrated as National Day is because it marks the day that an uprising began in the city of Wuchang. That uprising led to the successful revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and 2,000 years of imperial rule. Revolutionaries like Dr. Sun Yat-sen had been forming secret societies for decades, but in 1911, an accident happened in Wuchang: One of the bombs that were secretly being made by the revolutionaries exploded by accident. Police came to check it out and discovered the lists of people who were involved in these secret societies.
Now these people knew once they got caught, they would be executed so they decided to start an uprising. Officials panicked and fled and this uprising spread to other provinces as well. Within three months, the Qing dynasty was overthrown, and Asia’s first democratic republic, the Republic of China, was founded.
A key figure in the revolution was Dr. Sun Yat-en, who is seen as the founding father of the republic of China. He spent his teenage years in Hawaii and was impressed with the democratic values of American society. When he returned to work as a doctor in China, he was disturbed at the imperial oppression of the people and eventually worked full time for the revolution. He had tried to launch a revolution ten times before it succeeded. He was also exiled for 16 years but still raised money from abroad to fund the revolution. Once he heard about the Wuchang uprising, he came back to China to assist the revolution, and was nominated the first provisional president of the Republic of China. Unfortunately he died an early death due to liver cancer at the age of 58.
The Republic of China relocated to Taiwan after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.