What if we could go back in history with our DNA kits and do a few tests? I would go back to the time when a kingdom was inherited and a king had to have a son. And that first son, no matter what his problems, was heir to the throne at the moment of…
Category: Russia
The Year was 1937
The brothers were born two years apart. The younger one died in 1937, when he was 38. The older one lived to be 86. Yet it is the younger one who became the most famous. He was George Gershwin, born in 1898 in Brooklyn. Their parents had emigrated from Russia. They wanted Ira, the first…
The year was 1745
Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst was supposed to change her language, her religion, and even her first name to be suitable for her prospective husband’s family. While he stayed in his rooms playing with his massive collection of tin soldier armies, Sophie, alone and friendless in her new country, was studying, often pacing her suite of rooms…
The year was 1581
Okay, one of the Ivans was truly terrible. But he had a pretty authentic reason to be. When Ivan, the Grand Duke of Moscow, was three and his little brother Yuri, a deaf mute, was two, their father, Czar Vasily III, died. Their mother acted as regent for the babies, but when Ivan was seven,…
The year was 1904
What Czar Nicholas desperately needed was a son. Czarina Alexandra quickly gave birth to five daughters, all healthy. Finally, on Aug. 12, 1904, a son arrived. Baby Alexei seemed healthy, but when he was six weeks old, he began bleeding through his naval. The blood could not be stopped. The horrible truth – hemophilia! This…