Alaa Abd el-Fattah - You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

23 July 1952: Mid-ranking army officers stage a coup, depose King Farouq and take control of the state. Mohammed Naguib is their figurehead and the Revolution Command Council is established as the ruling authority.

August 1952: Workers protest for better conditions in Kafr al-Dawwar is brutally repressed, and two of the workers are sentenced to death and executed.

September 1952 January 1953: The Agrarian Reform Law initiates a major land redistribution programme, bolsters popular support for the revolution. The Constitution of 1923 is abrogated. All political parties are dissolved and banned.

January 1954: After a short honeymoon period with the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed.

March 1954: Naguib, who favoured a return to constitutional government, is sidelined. Gamal Abdal Nasser consolidates power.

October 1954: Nasser survives an assassination attempt. The Brotherhood are blamed and a brutal crackdown begins.

March 1956: A new election law grants women the right to vote.

July 1956: Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal.

October 1956: Israel invades Egypts Sinai Peninsula, under agreement with France and the UK, but international pressure forces their withdrawal. A major political victory for Nasser. Control of the canal is cemented.

1959: Arrests of communist intellectuals and activists begin. Hundreds are detained, some are tortured, at least two are killed, most are not released until 1964.

January 1960: Construction begins on the Aswan High Dam, Nassers landmark development project.

September 1961: Nasser with Nehru of India and Tito of Yugoslavia initiates the International Non-Aligned Movement.

June 1967: War between Israel and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel occupies the Palestinian West Bank, the Gaza strip, the Syrian Golan Heights, and Egypts Sinai Peninsula. A humiliating defeat. A war of attrition begins against Israeli forces now occupying the east bank of the Suez Canal.

September 1970: Nasser dies of a heart attack. His successor is Vice-President Anwar El-Sadat.

May 1971: Sadat purges powerful opponents with the Corrective Revolution, announces the closure of political detention centres, and starts releasing detained activists, mainly Muslim Brotherhood members.

January 1972: A student uprising demanding democracy, press freedom and a popular war to liberate Sinai, occupies Tahrir Square and is expelled by police with force.

October 1973: Egypt and Syria launch war against Israel in an effort to regain lands lost in 1967.

April 1974: Members of an Islamist group break into the Technical Military Academy in Cairo: the first step in a planned coup to announce the birth of an Islamic State. Security forces engage, killing eleven.

April 1974: Sadats October Paper sets the stage for a complete reversal of economic policy: promoting entrepreneurship over central planning, and the dismantling of the public sector.

January 1977: A price hike of basic commodities triggers massive riots across the country. The army is deployed, a curfew imposed and more than 100 people are killed.

August 1978: Sadat establishes the National Democratic Party (NDP) which inherits the assets, resources and status of the state political party, the Socialist Union.

197779: Sadat visits Jerusalem to address the Knesset. He signs the Camp David Accords with Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin. In response, Egypt is boycotted by most Arab countries, the headquarters of the Arab League are moved from Cairo to Tunis and Egypts membership is suspended.

1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan, triggering a guerrilla war with local Islamist mujahideen. The CIA begins covert operations in support, which Sadat is heavily involved with: supplying Soviet weapons to the fighters, training insurgents, and allowing Egyptian militant Islamists to travel to Afghanistan to join the war.

May 1980: Sadat openly denounces the Coptic Church, accusing it of trying to establish a state within a state.

September 1981: Sadat deposes the Coptic Pope. He orders the arrests of 1,536 people who fall across the entire political and professional spectrum. This is accompanied by asset freezes, professional expulsions and the closure of certain newspapers.

October 1981: Sadat is assassinated by members of a militant Islamist group while attending a military parade. The group begins a simultaneous insurrection in Asyut and takes control of the city for a few days before paratroopers from Cairo restore government control. Sadat is succeeded by his Vice-President Hosni Mubarak and a state of national emergency is declared. It will be continually renewed throughout the coming thirty years of Mubaraks rule.

September 1984: Workers demonstrate and stage a sit-in at Kafr el-Dawwar Spinning & Weaving Factory (public sector), protesting rising food prices and demanding increased pay. The sit-in is violently broken up by police forces, leaving three workers dead. Several more strikes will follow, protesting rising prices, low pay, corruption, neglect of the public sector and the complicity of the official workers unions.

November 1987: The Arab boycott of Egypt ends, Egyptian membership of the Arab League will be restored, and its headquarters return to Cairo.

August 1989: Workers occupying the Iron & Steel Factory in Helwan are attacked by Central Security Forces. One worker is killed, tens are wounded, and about 600 are arrested and tortured at police stations.

February 1990: Islamist militants attack a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Egypt, killing eleven. Eight months later, they assassinate Rifaat el-Mahgoub, Speaker of Parliament, in Cairo.

January 1991: Egypt sends 35,000 troops to join the US-led war on Iraq. As a reward, $14bn of Egypts $46bn foreign debt is dropped.

May 1991: Egypt agrees its first structural adjustment loan with the International Monetary Fund: $380m, conditional on the removal of price controls, reduced subsidies, introduction of sales tax and an accelerated privatization programme for state-owned enterprises.

1993: Several militant Islamist attacks on tourists, senior police officials shot dead in daylight ambushes, and failed assassination attempts on the Interior Minister and the Prime Minister.

October 1994: 15,000 workers in Kafr el-Dawwar strike and occupy the factory. Security forces lay siege, cut off water and electricity. In the eventual dispersal, violence spreads across the town, injuring sixty and killing four.