He is best known for his role as a mystical adviser in the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
On the night of December 29, 1916, a group of conspirators, including the tsar’s first cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and Prince Felix Yusupov, invited Rasputin to Yusupov's palace and fed him wine and cakes laced with cyanide.
Though Rasputin eventually became rather drunk, the poison seemed to have no effect. Baffled but not deterred, the conspirators finally shot Rasputin multiple times. He was then wrapped in a carpet and thrown into the Neva River, where it was discovered three days later.
Although Rasputin was gone, the last of his prophecies was yet to unfold. Shortly before his death, he wrote to Nicholas to predict that if he were killed by government officials, the entire imperial family would be killed by the Russian people.
His prophecy came true 15 months later, when the Tsar, his wife Alexandra and all of their children were murdered by assassins amidst the Russian Revolution. bit.ly/3oBbyNg
#OnThisDay in 1898, Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform. Initially a concubine, she ended up becoming one of the most powerful women in the history of China.
"Whoever makes me unhappy for a day, I will make suffer a lifetime."
📷 Colorized for The Colour of Time
Cixi effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. To this day, historians both in China and abroad are still debating her legacy.
"Depicted in writings by English contemporaries in the foreign service as cunning, treacherous and sex-crazed, Cixi was painted as a caricature of a woman, and a symbol of Europeans' beliefs about "the Orient" in general."
Catherine, pictured here, was very curious about the new Photomaton machines that arrived in her town in the mid 1930s. Each year, on the anniversary of her first visit to one of these, she would sit for a new strip of photographs.
On September 12, 1940, a French teenager took his dog for a walk - a simple everyday event, but it was to lead to one of the most stunning archaeological discoveries of all time.
Robot, the dog, ran into a hole created by a fallen tree. Ravidat threw some stones into the hole.
Returning later with some friends and a teacher he climbed down the hole and began to explore.
The boys discovered what were to become known as the Lascaux cave paintings – estimated to be between 17,000 to 20,000 years old and excitedly described by experts as “the cradle of art”.
Over 600 parietal wall paintings cover the interior walls and ceilings of the cave.
Colorized by me: Cousins Tsar Nicholas II and King George V in German military uniforms, Berlin, 1913.
This picture was taken during the wedding of the Kaiser’s daughter Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.
Tsar Nicholas II is in the uniform of the Westphalian Hussars and King George V in the uniform of the Rhenish Cuirassiers – their respective German regiments.
The wedding took place on 24 May, and became the largest gathering of reigning monarchs in Germany since 1871, and one of the last great social events of European royalty before WWI began 14 months later.
Colorized by me: Tuskegee airmen Marcellus G. Smith and Roscoe C. Brown, Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the United States Armed Forces.
Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. bit.ly/3t4XITq