Curated playlist
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, an estimated four million people had gathered in and around Vatican City to mourn…
- Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl governed Germany for sixteen years, the longest chancellorship in the country's post-war history. He was described by two American presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as "the greatest European leader…
- 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 was coming. That earliest memory shaped everything: a boy growing up in the…
- 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 Juárez. The middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, honored the Italian socialists…
- 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 caused would follow him for the rest of his life. What makes that fact remarkable…
- 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 bride, Ekaterina Dolgorukova, was already waiting. Instead, the boy who had briefly…
- 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. As the train passed through Timisoara station, the Iron Guard opened fire in a failed attempt to kill him.…
- 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 silver cross. She strode into the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards…
- 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 Prussian Pomerania. Her family had little money. Her rise was bankrolled by her mother…
- 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 continent's worth of territory, and been blown apart by a bomb on a canal road in…
- 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. Born as Marta Helena Skowrońska, she rose to become Empress of Russia, ruling for a short time before her…
- HirohitoHirohito reigned over Japan for 63 years, from 1926 until his death in 1989, the longest reign of any emperor in Japanese history. He sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne as the 124th emperor in the traditional order of succession. During those…
- 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, well-formed and slim... with a look both bewildered and fierce." Sophia of Hanover saw…
- 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. He was born Gian Galeazzo Ciano on the 18th of March 1903 in Livorno, Italy, the son of an admiral and…
- 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. He was born a prince in Vienna, nephew to Poland's last king, at a time when Poland…