The Peasant Prophet

Before he was rubbing elbows with the Romanovs, Grigori Rasputin was just a wandering Siberian peasant with a knack for making people feel very uncomfortable. Claiming to be a holy man (though he was never actually ordained as a monk), Rasputin preached a highly suspicious brand of theology: to be saved, one first had to sin. And boy, did he sin. His reputation for drunken debauchery and scandalous liaisons with aristocratic women made him a tabloid sensation in Saint Petersburg. Despite his notorious reputation as a serial philanderer, he managed to maintain an iron grip on the Russian throne.

The Hemophilia Whisperer

So how did a remarkably unhygienic mystic become the shadow ruler of the Russian Empire? It all came down to a bizarre medical dependency. Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra's only son, Alexei, suffered from severe hemophilia. Whenever the boy was bleeding and on the brink of death, Rasputin would step in—and miraculously, Alexei would recover. Whether he used hypnosis, spiritual magnetism, or simply advised doctors to stop giving the boy blood-thinning aspirin, Rasputin convinced the desperate Tsarina that the fate of the Romanov dynasty rested entirely in his unwashed hands.

The Unkillable Monk

Rasputin's outsized influence deeply angered the Russian aristocracy, leading to one of the most bizarre and botched assassination attempts in recorded history. On a freezing night in December 1916, a group of frantic nobles invited him over for a deadly dinner party. According to the legend later crafted by his killers, his demise was impossibly difficult:

• He consumed enough cyanide-laced cakes and wine to kill a whole room of men, but didn't even flinch.
• He was shot point-blank in the chest, only to spring back up and aggressively strangle his attacker.
• He was shot two more times and brutally beaten, yet still managed to crawl out into the snow.
• Finally, the panicked conspirators bound him and threw him into the freezing Malaya Nevka River, where he allegedly died of drowning rather than the bullets or poison.