WASHINGTON — Bastille Day, July 14, marks the turning point in the French Revolution, when a group of roughly 1,000 people took over the Bastille prison in Paris in 1789.

The unrest was set off by the rough economic shape France was in at the time, in part because they spent a lot of money helping the fledgling United States with the American Revolution. The Third Estate (the Catholic clergy comprised the First Estate; the nobility, the Second), a representative body composed of commoners, bore the brunt of a whole bunch of new taxes.

That didn’t go over well.

At the time, there were only seven prisoners in the Bastille and some weapons. Historians say the real significance was that the army didn’t do much to try to quell the uprising. That was a clear sign to King Louis XVI that his grip on power was tenuous.

The revolution went on for years after, with many nobles killed in revolutionary violence. But Bastille Day is considered the birth of the Republic of France.

Here are a few facts you may not know, or may only half-know, about Bastille Day, and the Bastille uprising itself.