alexanderpalace.org

N7rnQ TIL Handwriting experts suggest Czar Alexander I of Russia, who defeated Napoleon, faked his own death and reinvented himself as the monk Fyodor Kuzmich, who had noble manners, spoke several languages, and claimed to have forgotten his past.
WkVMd TIL In 1888, the train carrying the Russian Imperial Family derailed. Emperor Alexander III used his massive physical strength to lift the collapsed roof of the dining car so his family could escape. However, the blunt force trauma on his kidneys caused the nephritis which killed him 6 years later.
nALY TIL the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, at the age of 13, was one of the first known teenagers to take a mirror selfie.