Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (1901–18) was the
youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial
Russia, and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna. Anastasia had three older
sisters (Olga, Tatiana, and Maria), and a younger brother (Alexei
Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia). She was executed with her family in
an extrajudicial killing by members of Cheka, the Bolshevik secret
police, on 17 July 1918. Persistent rumors of her possible escape
circulated, fueled by the fact that the location of her burial was
unknown during Communist rule. Several women falsely claimed to have
been Anastasia, the most notorious of whom was Anna Anderson; DNA
testing after Anderson's death showed no link between her and the
Imperial family. Anastasia's possible survival has been conclusively
disproved. The mass grave near Ekaterinburg which held the remains of
the Tsar, his wife, and three daughters was revealed in 1991, but the
bodies of Alexei Nikolaevich and one of his sisters—either Anastasia
or Maria—were not discovered there. However, the charred bodies of the
two missing siblings were found in 2007 and identified using DNA
testing.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1453:
The Battle of Castillon, the last conflict of the Hundred
Years' War, ended with the English losing all landholdings in France,
except Calais.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castillon>
1771:
Dene men, acting as a guide to Samuel Hearne on his exploration
of the Coppermine River in present-day Nunavut, Canada, massacred a
group of about 20 Copper Inuit.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Falls_Massacre>
1918:
Russian Revolution: Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II and
his family at Yekaterinburg.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_the_Romanov_family>
1973:
Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, was ousted
in a coup by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing
eye surgery.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zahir_Shah>
1981:
A structural failure caused a walkway at the Hyatt Regency
hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, US, to collapse (damage pictured),
killing 114 people and injuring 216 others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
disconsolate:
1. Cheerless, dreary.
2. Seemingly beyond consolation; inconsolable.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disconsolate>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too
small. Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
--Isaac Watts
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Watts>