Curated category
Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyła on the 18th of May 1920, in the small Polish town of Wadowice. By the time he died on the 2nd of April 2005…
- Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl governed Germany for sixteen years, the longest chancellorship in the country's post-war history.
- Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson was three years old when he heard a man outside the Augusta parsonage announce in disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war…
- 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…
- Józef PiłsudskiJózef Piłsudski was 40 degrees below zero on the first night of his imprisonment in Siberia. That single night nearly killed him, and the health problems it…
- Peter II of RussiaPeter II of Russia was an emperor who died on the morning of his own wedding day. He was fourteen years old. The date was the 30th of January 1730, and 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.
- Elizabeth of RussiaElizabeth Petrovna seized the Russian throne on the night of the 25th of November 1741 wearing a warrior's metal breastplate over her dress and gripping a…
- Catherine the GreatCatherine the Great was born Princess Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, on the 2nd of May 1729, in the Ducal Castle of Stettin in…
- Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia was born on the 29th of April 1818, and by the time he died he had freed more than 23 million people from bondage, sold an entire…
- Catherine I of RussiaCatherine I of Russia carried an origin story that her own successors treated as a state secret, not fit for the official record.
- HirohitoHirohito reigned over Japan for 63 years, from 1926 until his death in 1989, the longest reign of any emperor in Japanese history.
- Peter the GreatPeter the Great stood over six feet tall in an era when most men barely reached his shoulder. Saint-Simon, who met him in 1717, described him as "tall…
- Galeazzo CianoGaleazzo Ciano voted to overthrow his own father-in-law on the 24th of July 1943, and paid for it with his life six months later.
- Józef PoniatowskiJózef Poniatowski spent more than three decades in uniform, fighting under three different flags before his life ended in a chaotic retreat in Germany.