On July 25, 1894, in waters off an island named Fengdao in Chinese, Japanese naval ships launched a preemptive attack on a flotilla of Beiyang Fleet on a mission to escort Qing troops to Korea, which ended with Chinese warships the Jiyuan and the Guangyi damaged and unarmed transport the Gaosheng sunk. The Qing government later declared war on Japan. The First Sino-Japanese War, better known as the Jiawu War in China, thus broke out. [Photo: Agencies]