Rasputin the Mystic

Neither a monk nor a priest as commonly believed, Rasputin was a wandering peasant who eventually came to exert great power over Nicholas II, the last tsar of Imperial Russia. The royal family came under his spell when, claiming to have visions of the future and strange healing powers, he began to minister to Alexei, Nicholas's young son. Alexei suffered from hemophilia, but when Rasputin prayed over the child, the hemorrhaging mysteriously stopped. The tsarina, Alexandra, soon came to believe that without Rasputin, her son would die. He became a regular palace visitor, though his presence wasn't always welcome. He was accused of scandalous misdeeds, including rape, and of having too much political control over the royal family. A number of people eventually tired of Rasputin's influence and conspired to murder him. On one cold December night in 1916, the mad healer was lured to the palace of Prince Felix Yusupov, where he was fed cakes and drinks laced with cyanide. To the horror of the conspirators, however, Rasputin was unaffected by their poisons. In desperation, they shot him several times and beat him before dumping him into the icy waters of the Neva River. His body was later found and autopsied; the results purportedly showed that he died of hypothermia, not cyanide or gunshot wounds.