Earlier today, a jeep entered Beijing's Tiananmen Square and plowed through a crowd, before crashing and erupting in flames. The incident so far has killed five people (with many more injured), and led to the total evacuation of the square. As of this writing, the identity of the Jeep's driver is not known, though the state-run Global Times is reporting that the Beijing police has targeted two suspects, both from China's far-western Xinjiang region. In an effort to stem the spread of information about the event, the Chinese government has censored news and micro-blog accounts and deleted user-sourced photographs of its aftermath.

This is a still-developing story with few concrete details, and I suspect it will be awhile—if ever—before we know exactly what happened. But it's worth mentioning why the setting of the incident—Tiananmen Square—is so significant.

To many Westerners, the words “Tiananmen Square” conjures up one incident: the Communist Party's massacre of protesters, which took place in the streets surrounding the square on June 4, 1989. But Tiananmen has served as the setting of many other important events in Chinese history. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China at the square, and less than two decades later he addressed hundreds of thousands of young “Red Guards” there during the height of the Cultural Revolution. In January 1976, many more Chinese people poured into Tiananmen Square in a massive, spontaneous memorial for Premier Zhou Enlai, who had died the day before. When the “Gang of Four,” the de facto rulers of China, cracked down on the outpouring of grief, the ensuing series of events led to the gang's arrest and brought the Cultural Revolution to an end.