Curated category
Heads of state and government who were later imprisoned
- Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini was named after a Mexican president. His father, a blacksmith and a socialist, chose the name Benito for the liberal Mexican leader Benito…
- Indira GandhiOn the 31st of October 1984, Indira Gandhi walked toward a wicket gate in the garden at 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi. Two of her own Sikh bodyguards stood…
- Mary, Queen of ScotsMary, Queen of Scots was six days old when she became queen. Her father, King James V of Scotland, died on the 14th of December 1542 before he ever truly…
- Lady Jane GreyJane Grey sat in the presence of her father or mother, speaking, keeping silence, sitting, standing, going, eating, drinking, merrily or sadly.
- Louis XVILouis XVI asked one last question on the morning of his execution: "Any news of La Pérouse?" The explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, had…
- Édouard DaladierÉdouard Daladier was born in Carpentras, a town in the Vaucluse region of France, on the 18th of June 1884. He grew up as the son of a village baker and…
- Charles I of EnglandCharles I walked to his own execution on the morning of the 30th of January 1649 wearing two shirts. He had chosen them deliberately: the day was bitter…
- Ion AntonescuIon Antonescu was executed by a military firing squad on the 1st of June 1946, at a site outside Jilava called Valea Piersicilor, the Valley of the Peach…
- Jefferson DavisJefferson F. Davis was born on the 3rd of June, 1808, in a village his father had established in Kentucky, and he died in a borrowed New Orleans home on the…
- Valerian (emperor)Valerian entered the Senate before AD 238 as a Suffectus consul. He later served as Ordinarius consul in that same year, marking his early ascent within…
- Patrice LumumbaPatrice Lumumba was born Isaïe Tasumbu Tawosa on the 2nd of July 1925 in Onalua, in the Kasaï province of the Belgian Congo.
- 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…
- Imre NagyImre Nagy was hanged in secret on the 16th of June 1958, and the Hungarian government waited until after he was dead to tell anyone.
- Wojciech JaruzelskiWojciech Jaruzelski was born on the 6th of July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of Polish gentry, the seventh of eight children.
- Karl DönitzKarl Dönitz spent the last days of the Second World War not in a submarine, but in the office of the German head of state.
- Hideki TojoHideki Tojo was awakened at 5:00 a.m. on the 8th of December 1941 and told that Japanese planes had struck the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
- Erich HoneckerErich Honecker stood at a podium in Saarland in September 1987 and spoke of a day when Germans would no longer be separated by borders.
- Slobodan MiloševićSlobodan Milošević was born in Požarevac on the 20th of August 1941, four months after Axis forces had overrun the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.