Tsar Watch: Russia’s murdered royals avenged at last, only not really
Shocking news from Russia: a man claiming to be a member of the Romanov dynasty recently tracked down and beat to death an 82 year old ex-KGB officer for his part in the murder of Tsar Nikolai II and his family. The only problem is that as the Tsar was murdered in 1918, the KGB officer in question could not possibly have taken part in the killings as he was still 10 years away from being born. Actually that’s not the only problem. The KGB officer was also the father of the enraged Romanov who killed him. What’s that? How can a KGB officer be related to the royal family? Well- he wasn’t. The killer was actually an outpatient from a mental hospital, a man identified in the Russian press only as ‘Alexander’. He didn’t really track down his father either. He was already in his East Moscow apartment. And when police arrived, summoned after a ‘suspicious noise’ was heard:
Alexander was reciting poetry proclaiming his royal lineage. He had made no attempt to dispose of his father’s dead body.
So really, there’s no vengeance going on here. Well there might be- we don’t know if the KGB officer did other terrible things that we don’t know about. But in the absence of such information we are left instead with a sad tale of mental illness and pointless death. ‘It happens’, as they say in Russia.
Meanwhile in Turkey a sheep recently gave birth to a lamb with a human face. Honestly. Pravda.ru even has a picture.
It’s a wonderful, strange, terrifying world.
H/t: Marc Bennetts
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Kind of wish I hadn’t followed the link to the picture of the lamb with the human face.
Ricky, because of your comment, I looked at the picture, too. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.
I thought the sweet baby lamb was very, very pretty.
Pravda is the world’s greatest Web site. I’ve actually got a post on the greatness of Pravda sitting in an incubation period.
It is greatly underrated. For months I stared at a link to a story about a human cyclops born in India. Don’t click, I said to myself, don’t click.
I clicked.
Their recent Olympic prostitution story was Pulitzer-caliber:
“Hard-working females can make tens of thousands of dollars in only two Olympic weeks. Nigh[t] clubs, massage parlors, striptease bars, etc also hire additional personnel for the Winter Olympics.
“Female employees who wish to work in the above-mentioned organizations are aware of the fact that they will have to take a very active part in the Games too. Many women come to Vancouver to work ‘like Olympic champions’ for two weeks and then return back home.”
http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/04-02-2010/112035-vancouver-0
Now that’s what I call investigative reporting.