Curated category
Leaders ousted by a coup
- Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev stood before a closed session of the 20th Party Congress on the 25th of February 1956, and in four hours dismantled the reputation of a man…
- Ferdinand MarcosFerdinand Marcos arrived in Hawaii in February 1986 with 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry, and a 12 by 4 foot box full of…
- Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of SomersetEdward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, rose from a minor English noble family to become the effective ruler of England for two years, all because his sister…
- 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…
- Joseph Kasa-VubuJoseph Kasa-Vubu took his name from a poison test. His father, a prosperous farmer in the village of Kuma-Dizi in the Bas-Congo, had built his house at the…
- 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…
- Maximilien RobespierreMaximilien Robespierre was born in Arras on the 6th of May 1758. Thirty-six years later, on the 28th of July 1794, he was executed without trial, sent to the…
- Carol II of RomaniaCarol II of Romania left his country on the 6th of September 1940 with a train loaded with 30 truckloads of his personal fortune.
- 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…
- Jacobo ÁrbenzJacobo Árbenz stood at a podium on the 15th of March 1951, promising to convert Guatemala from "a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a…
- Olof SkötkonungOlof Skötkonung ruled Sweden at a moment when the Viking Age was ending and something new was taking shape. His coins carry the Latin inscription OLUF REX…
- Mohammad MosaddeghMohammad Mosaddegh, born on the 16th of June 1882, became the most popular politician in Iran's modern history by doing something no Iranian leader had dared…
- 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…
- Paul BarrasPaul Barras, born on the 30th of June 1755 in the small Provencal town of Fox-Amphoux, rose from a noble family to become the most powerful executive in…
- Efraín Ríos MonttEfraín Ríos Montt died of a heart attack at his home in Guatemala City on the 1st of April 2018, at the age of 91, without ever completing a criminal trial.