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 was born in Peleș Castle as the son of Crown Prince Ferdinand and Crown Princess Marie. He spent his early years under the thumb of King Carol I, a…
- 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.