Curated playlist
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
- David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George had to be smuggled out of Birmingham disguised as a policeman.
- Nicholas IINicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, carried a large dragon tattooed on his right forearm. The artist was Hori Chiyo, and the tattoo was a souvenir of the young heir's visit to Japan. That same journey nearly ended in disaster. At…
- Wilhelm IIWilhelm II, the last German Emperor, spent much of his adult life holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand. The gloves made that arm look longer than it was. He reigned from 1888 to 1918 over a country that had become Europe's…
- Hermann GöringHermann Göring swallowed cyanide the night before his hanging in October 1946. He had asked for a firing squad.
- Józef PiłsudskiJózef Piłsudski robbed a Russian mail train in 1908 to fund his secret army. The haul was 200,812 rubles.
- Victor Emmanuel IIItalian politicians called Victor Emmanuel II an imbecile, yet he became Italy's first king.
- Leopold II of BelgiumLeopold II of Belgium was the second king of the Belgians, and in 1908 he lost the Congo. The entire archive of the Congo Free State was then burned. Leopold told an aide that, although the colony had been taken from him, "they have no…
- Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt climbed Chimborazo in 1802, gasping and bleeding from his gums.
- ChulalongkornKing Chulalongkorn of Siam abolished slavery without a civil war. He avoided the bloodshed he linked to America's.
- Franz Joseph IOn the evening of the 21st of November 1916, inside Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph I gave his valet a final instruction. "Tomorrow morning, at half past three." Those were his last words. He was 86 years old. Franz…