Curated playlist
Collars of the Order of the White Lion
- Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin signed his articles "K. Stalin", an alias drawn from the Russian word for steel, translated as "Man of Steel." The man who chose it was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, into poverty in the small Georgian city of Gori.…
- Mohammad Reza PahlaviMohammad Reza Pahlavi was born on the 26th of October 1919 in Tehran, the eldest son of a Brigadier-General who had not yet become king. He died in Egyptian exile on the 27th of July 1980-18 months after the revolution that ended his…
- Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev was born on the 2nd of March 1931 in Privolnoye, a village in the North Caucasus, into a peasant family so poor his parents had married as teenagers and lived in an adobe-walled hut belonging to his grandfather. He died…
- François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand arrived in this world on the 26th of October 1916 in the small Charente town of Jarnac, and he died in Paris on the 8th of January 1996 having spent fourteen years as the most powerful man in…
- Yuri AndropovYuri Andropov died on the 9th of February 1984 at 16:50, aged 69, after spending barely 15 months as the leader of the Soviet Union. He entered the Kremlin as the first former head of the KGB ever to become General Secretary, and he left…
- Kim Il SungKim Il Sung arrived at the Korean port of Wonsan on the 19th of September 1945, stepping off a ship as a 33-year-old captain in the Soviet Red Army after 26 years away from the peninsula. According to one Soviet official, he had been…
- HirohitoHirohito reigned over Japan for 63 years, from 1926 until his death in 1989, the longest reign of any emperor in Japanese history. He sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne as the 124th emperor in the traditional order of succession. During those…
- SukarnoSukarno was born Koesno Sosrodihardjo on the 6th of June 1901, in Surabaya, East Java, the son of a Muslim Javanese primary school teacher and a Hindu Balinese mother from the Brahmin caste. By the time he died on the 21st of June 1970, he…
- Wojciech JaruzelskiWojciech Jaruzelski was born on the 6th of July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of Polish gentry, the seventh of eight children. Before he turned twenty, his father would be dead in a Soviet camp, his eyes would be permanently damaged from…
- Alfonso XIIIAlfonso XIII was carried naked to the prime minister on a silver tray moments after he was born, already a king. His father, Alfonso XII, had died the previous year, making this infant born on the 17th of May 1886 the ruler of Spain from…