this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
56 points (100.0% liked)
Moving to: m/AskMbin!
63 readers
9 users here now
### We are moving! **Join us in our new journey as we take a new direction towards the future for this community at mbin, find our new community here and read this post to know more about why we are moving. Thank you and we hope to see you there!**
founded 1 year ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's always the remarkable story of Rasputin's death. He was an advisor to Nicholas II of Russia, and refused to die after being poisoned, shot, and beat.
"The would-be killers first gave the monk food and wine laced with cyanide, however, when Rasputin seemingly failed to respond to the poison, they shot him at close range and left him for dead. In spite of these murderous measures, Rasputin revived shortly thereafter and made an attempt to flee the palace grounds, only to be intercepted by his assailants who shot him again and viciously beat him. They then bound Rasputin, who was remarkably still alive, and threw him into the freezing Neva River. His battered body was found several days later and it was reported that there was water in his lungs, indicating that he finally died by drowning."
https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/10/the-murder-of-rasputin/#:~:text=On%20the%20night%20of%20December,and%20left%20him%20for%20dead.
I will also add, it's pretty neat that Ernest Shackleton's famed lost ship, the Endurance, was found 100 years to the day that Ernest was buried.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12236603/amp/The-wreck-Sir-Ernest-Shackletons-ship-Endurance-discovered-100-years-day.html
Shackleton's journey by open lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia was in itself pretty astonishing. Captain Frank Worsley navigated using iirc a couple of pencils and a rubber band, and only caught a few glimpses of the sun to help his calculations. They landed on the wrong side of the island and had to climb a mountain pass to get to the whaling station. At the top of the pass they decided, what the hell, and slid down on their backsides. This didn't kill them, phew, but it did shred their trousers, so at the bottom they carefully safety-pinned the bits together, "in case there are ladies".
Not just astonishing but arguably "the greatest small-boat journey ever completed." A truly fascinating voyage…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_James_Caird
comes between that and William Bligh of the bounty. following mutiny his small crew was cast adrift 35 miles to the south of Tofua near the Kingdom of Tonga in a 23ft open keel-less boat. They were able to safely navigate across 4000 miles of open ocean to Kupang, Timor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's_open-boat_voyage
I recently became fascinated by the Shackleton story--it's really amazing. I can't add much, besides "yes, read up on it!", but here is a cool, relevant song with beautiful lyrics that captures the adventure aspect really well.
The Punch Brothers - Another New World
With regard to Rasputin, the story of his death may have been exaggerated by the people who did it, in an attempt to convince the Czar that Rasputin was some kind of supernatural evil. The Czar really liked Rasputin, and the people who killed him (people whose wives Rasputin had likely bedded) wanted to avoid repercussions.
They just knew the story would make a great disco song 60 years later.
You mean to tell me Rasputin wasn't a lich?
I read that the rasputin thing was probably made up by the people that killed him to convince the Tzar that he was a demon. He was fucking all their wives and embarrassing them. Unfortunately, the tzar and his wife were convinced he was curing their son with some kind weird ass spirituality nonsense. Truth is, what was keeping the kid alive was not letting him go to the horrible doctors of the time.