Quick Hits!

*Evil People In History

*Rasputin

*Peasant background, joined a monastery but did not last long

*He travelled around as a 'Faith Healer' and claimed to possess special powers that enabled him to heal the sick, surviving off the donations

*He was also known to make money in the gypsy art of Fortune Telling and the Tarot of the people he had 'cured'

*Rasputin

*Rasputin was an unkempt, but imposing figure.

*Tall with a dark beard and spellbinding eyes, he used his natural charisma and deep quiet voice in an almost vaudeville manner when presenting himself.

*He soon took his 'show' to St Petersburg and made a name for himself as something of a mystic.

*It wasn't long before he caught the eye of more powerful people amongst the Russian aristocracy.

Rasputin

*Rasputin and the Romanovs

*While in St Petersburg, Rasputin met the Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra.

*Their only son, Alexei, suffered from haemophilia. Physicians were unable to help Alexei, and the Tsarina became frustrated.

*During a particularly bad bleeding episode the Tsar, looking for something of a miracle, called upon his wife's newfound friend and supposed 'faith healer', Rasputin.

*Somehow Rasputin managed to stop Alexei's bleeding; as a result, he became a hero to the Romanov family and started moving in the Tsarina's social circles.

*He was said to have great influence over Alexandra and supposedly manipulated her. This relationship led to resentment on the part of the Tsarina's husband Nicholas and his powerful and influential peers in the Russian nobility, but the Tsar was afraid to send Rasputin away for fear of being blamed for killing Alexei.

*Rasputin & Alexandra

*Nicholas went to the front lines during WWI and left his wife in charge

*She was German and so the Russians did not trust her

*Rasputin was her advisor and rumours spread threat they were having an affair

*Stories of pacts with the Devil and 'magic eyes' that hypnotised all around, including the Romanovs, most probably came from the Prime Minister

*The mystic convinced Alexandra further that if he should leave or die, the Romanov dynasty would end in bloodshed.

*Her fear for her family's lives and her utter trust in Rasputin pushed the Tsarina into keeping him by her side.

*More Rumours

*When he initially arrived in St Petersburg, Rasputin built up quite a band of followers within the Russian Orthodox Church.

*However, as rumours began to circulate about the various (and numerous) women that Rasputin was seducing, including many in the palace, these supporters began to turn on him and attempted to banish him.

*One by one, these opponents began to disappear, possibly by order of the Tsarina.

*While the Russian populace began to believe that Rasputin had some form of hypnotic control over the Tsar and Tsarina, the Tsar himself was being pushed close to insanity by the constant rumours about Rasputin and his wife.

*Rasputin’s Death

* Aristocrats arranged a plot of kill Rasputin to save the monarchy

* Prince Felix offered Rasputin pastries which contained lethal amounts of cyanide. He declined, but eventually indulged himself.

* This poison was supposed to have an immediate effect, but Rasputin was showing no signs of dying. Growing impatient, one of the assassins took a pistol and shot him.

* The murderers, under the impression he was dead, went to celebrate.

* About an hour later, Prince Felix returned to see the body. He shook Rasputin, and while he was still warm, there were no signs of life.

* As Felix went to leave, however, Rasputin rose to his feet and went about strangling the prince.

* Freeing himself, Felix rushed to tell the others that the mad monk was still alive.

* Rasputin ran across the courtyard, yelling 'Felix, Felix, I'll tell everything to the Tsarina.'

* A conspirator shot him in the back and again in the head.

* Rasputin crawled on the ground, and his assailant struck him with a blow to the head.

* By this time, Felix, thoroughly shaken, took a dumbbell and bludgeoned Rasputin.

* They then bound him and threw him into the Neva River. There he would remain for three days until the Tsar returned and Rasputin's body was taken from under the ice.

* The Tsar was outraged and exiled Prince Felix and the conspirators, but it was to be one of his last actions as ruler of Russia.

*Rasputin’s Legacy

*Some say that the legend surrounding Rasputin and his death is fabricated and not an accurate description of the truth.

*Although his body was found to have multiple stabs and shots, there is still a certain doubt about the authenticity of the accounts.

*Conclusive evidence found water in Rasputin's lungs, showing that he actually drowned: despite being shot three times, bludgeoned and poisoned, it was the waters that killed him.

*Whatever the case, the legend remained strong and was aided by the fact that the Romanov family and the long line of Tsar's ended not long after Rasputin's death, just as the 'Mad Monk' had foreseen.

*Rasputin was a womanizer, trickster, and corrupted the Russian Monarchy.

*Some say his involvement is what helped the people distrust the Romanovs and helped pushed them towards Revolution.

*Pol Pot and Cambodia

*An attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions.

*From 1975-1979 over 2mil people were killed

*Pol Pot’s Rise to Power

*Pol Pot studied in Paris but failed out of school due to a fascination with Marxism

*By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the wrath of the Prince

*In the jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk's government.

*Due to the Vietnam War and an American led coup there was instability in Cambodia

*This resulted in economic and military destabilization in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot

*Pol Pot in Power

*Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17, 1975 seized control of Cambodia.

*Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a visit to Communist China.

*Mao's "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies." Pol Pot would now attempt his own "Super Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

*He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.

*Pol Pot in Power

*All foreigners were thus expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign economic or medical assistance was refused.

*The use of foreign languages was banned. Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed.

*Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked.

*Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.

*All of Cambodia's cities were then forcibly evacuated. At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way.

*“Killing Fields”

*Millions of Cambodians were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days.

*Workdays in the fields began around 4 a.m. and lasted until 10 p.m., with only two rest periods allowed during the 18 hour day, all under the armed supervision of young Khmer Rouge soldiers eager to kill anyone for the slightest infraction.

*Starving people were forbidden to eat the fruits and rice they were harvesting. After the rice crop was harvested, Khmer Rouge trucks would arrive and confiscate the entire crop.

*Ten to fifteen families lived together with a chairman at the head of each group. All work decisions were made by the armed supervisors with no participation from the workers who were told, "Whether you live or die is not of great significance." Every tenth day was a day of rest. There were also three days off during the Khmer New Year festival.

*Purges

*Throughout Cambodia, deadly purges were conducted to eliminate remnants of the "old society" - the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and former government officials.

*Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.

*In the villages, unsupervised gatherings of more than two persons were forbidden. Young people were taken from their parents and placed in communals. They were later married in collective ceremonies involving hundreds of often-unwilling couples.

*Purges

*Up to 20,000 persons were tortured into giving false confessions at Tuol Sleng, a school in Phnom Penh which had been converted into a jail. Elsewhere, suspects were often shot on the spot before any questioning.

*Ethnic groups were attacked including the three largest minorities; the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims, along with twenty other smaller groups.

*Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambodia in 1975 perished. Khmer Rouge also forced Muslims to eat pork and shot those who refused.

*On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks.

*On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors.

*Pol Pot’s Legacy

*Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years.

*After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge.

*In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79.

*In all, an estimated 2,000,000 people were killed.

*Genghis Kahn

*The famous Mongol leader who started an empire that his descendants expanded over most of Asia

*At the age of 10, he killed one of his half-brothers in a fight over hunting spoils.

* His reign left behind no tangible artifacts -- like architecture or art -- does Khan's role as champion of diplomacy, religious tolerance and equal rights for women serve as legacy enough?

*And what of the incredible bloody legends that surround Genghis Khan?

*Many myths of death follow him that tell of his destruction

*Kahn the Ruler

*Genghis Khan was something of a populist conqueror. He generally followed a self-imposed rule that those who surrendered to him were allowed to live.

*Common folk were often spared, while their rulers usually were put to death. The same fate met anyone else who dared resist.

*Genghis Khan believed the strength of a man was defined by the children he left behind. He had thousands of women within his harem, and fathered children with many of them.

*A 2003 study found that as many as 16 million people alive today -- or about 0.5 percent of the global population -- are descendants of Khan

*Biggest Myth

*Genghis Khan is said to have once killed 1,748,000 people in a single hour.

*While Khan inarguably killed his fair share of people, it's impossible that he -- or anyone else -- personally ever took as many lives in such a short time.

*For Khan to have killed that many people in an hour, he would have had to take 29,133 lives per minute.

*The death toll refers to the population of the Persian city of Nishapur where his favourite son-in-law was killed by an arrow.

*Kahn’s daughter was heartbroken and requested that all citizens of Nishapur be killed.

*Women, children, infants, and even dogs and cats were all murdered. Worried that some of the inhabitants were wounded but still alive, Khan's daughter allegedly asked that each Nishapuran be beheaded, their skulls piled in pyramids. Ten days later, the pyramids were complete.

*Overall Destruction

*Kahn would use prisoners as human shields in battle.

*Khan's armies slaughtered more people than was managed by Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.

*His military campaigns sometimes involved eliminating the entire civilian population.

*As many as 40 million people were killed.

*On Genghis Khan’s order, he was buried in an unmarked grave at an unknown location in Mongolia. His funeral escort executed everyone in their path to conceal the location.

*While he brought law, wealth, civilization, culture, and power to the Mongolian people; he brought death and destruction to many other countries.

*Despite practicing religious and racial tolerance, and being a builder of alliances, he was ultimately a brutal despot who murdered millions of men, women and children. 

*Attila the Hun

*Khan of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453.

*He is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity.

*He plundered and devastated the Eastern and Western Roman Empire with a ferocity unparalleled in the records of barbarian invasions and compelling those he overcame to copy his mighty army.

*He would destroy the surrounding area of an opponent to put fear in them

*Death toll estimates are between 20-100 million citizens and soldiers.

*Attila drowned in his own blood on his wedding night.

*Maximilien Robespierre

*Maximilien Robespierre was a leader of the French Revolution and it was his arguments that caused the revolutionary government to murder the king without a trial.

*In addition, Robespierre was one of the main driving forces behind the reign of terror, a 10 month post-revolutionary period in which mass executions were carried out.

*The Terror took the lives of between 18,500 to 40,000 people, with 1,900 being killed in the last month.

*Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes.

*In an act of coincidental justice, Robespierre was guillotined without a trial in 1794.

*Idi Amin

*Idi Amin was an army officer and president of Uganda.

*He took power in a military coup in January 1971.

*His rule was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extra judicial killings and the expulsion of Indians from Uganda.

*The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown; estimates range from 80,000 to 500,000.

*On August 4, 1972, Amin issued a decree ordering the expulsion of the 60,000 Asians who were not Ugandan citizens (most of them held British passports).

*Amin was eventually overthrown, but until his death, he held that Uganda needed him and he never expressed remorse for the abuses of his regime.

*Leopold II of Belgium

*With financial support from the government, Leopold created the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken to extract rubber and ivory in the Congo region of central Africa, which relied on forced labour and resulted in the deaths of approximately 3 million Congolese.

*The regime of the Congo Free State became one of the more infamous international scandals of the turn of the century.

*The area of land privately owned by the King was an area 76 times larger than Belgium, which he was free to rule as a personal domain through his private army, the Force Publique.

*Leopold’s rubber gatherers tortured, maimed and slaughtered until at the turn of the century, the conscience of the Western world forced Brussels to call a halt.

*Sources

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-lancashire/plain/A2622403

*http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm

*http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/genghis-khan-murder.htm

*http://hubpages.com/hub/40-Facts-About-Genghis-Khan

*http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=Attila_the_Hun_The_Scourge_of_God_-_Demonic_

*http://listverse.com/2007/09/05/top-10-most-evil-men/