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Recipients of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 1st class

  • Nelson MandelaNelson Mandela wore a Springbok shirt to the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. He gave the trophy to an Afrikaner captain.
  • Jiang ZeminJiang Zemin once recited the Gettysburg Address in English to student protesters. He later led China from 1989 to 2002.
  • Fidel CastroFidel Castro's yacht carried eighty-one men toward Cuba, but only nineteen safely reached the mountains.
  • Bashar al-AssadBashar al-Assad was slipping out of Damascus on the morning of the 8th of December 2024 when his longtime driver asked him a question. According to accounts of his final hours, the driver said, "You're really leaving us?" Assad replied,…
  • Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in 1991 to defy a coup. Soldiers sent to crush the protest switched sides.
  • Abdullah II of JordanIn 1996, a man who would become King Abdullah II of Jordan appeared on screen in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager titled Investigations. At the time he was a prince commanding his country's Special Forces, and his part had no lines. He was…
  • Kofi AnnanKofi Annan became the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations only after France vetoed him four times and then finally chose to abstain. He was also the first holder of that office to be chosen from the organisation's own staff.…
  • Recep Tayyip ErdoğanRecep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed Turkey first as prime minister and then as president, once compared democracy to a train. In 1994, newly elected as mayor of Istanbul, he said: "Democracy is like a train: when we reach our…
  • Juan Carlos IJuan Carlos I of Spain was given the nickname Juan Carlos the Brief at the very moment he became king. The man who coined it was Santiago Carrillo, a Communist leader who expected the monarchy to be swept away along with the rest of the…
  • Hamad bin Khalifa Al ThaniSheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, born on the 1st of January 1952, ended his time as Emir of Qatar with a short televised address on the 25th of June 2013. He told the nation: "The time has come to open a new page in the journey of our…
  • Hassanal BolkiahHassanal Bolkiah, the sultan of Brunei, has held his throne since 1967. That makes him the longest-reigning current monarch and the longest-serving current head of state anywhere in the world. He is also counted among the few absolute…
  • Fumio KishidaFumio Kishida hosted the 2023 G7 summit in Hiroshima, where his relatives died in the atomic bombing.

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