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Genrikh Yagoda was a formidable leader of the Soviet Union’s secret police, the NKVD, under Josef Stalin, serving from 1934 to 1936. A committed member of the Communist Part, he was also well known for his ‘hobbies’. What were they?

Answer: Yagoda appreciated the ‘good life’: collecting fine wines, growing orchards, courting famous writer Maxim Gorky’s daughter-in-law, amassing ladies underwear, and buying German pornographic films and obscene cigarette holders.

Source: Stalin- The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore

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On This Day

1180 – Philip Augustus becomes king of France aged fifteen. He will be the first monarch to style himself ‘King of France’.

1739 – The Treaty of Belgrade is signed, placing Belgrade under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

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A short, sharp hit of history in video format. Acclaimed Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde was the toast of London society in the 1890s until things came decidedly unstuck through an association with a young British aristocrat, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as ‘Bosie’.

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HistoryWow’s Highlighted Historical Quotation

“I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”

Jane Austen (1775-1817), British author, on the accounts of history.

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HistoryWow’s Featured Historical Figure of Note

Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (1007-1063)

Welsh king. He became King of Gywnedd in 1039, and Deheubarth in 1044 and ruled virtually all of Wales by 1055. He began to attack a number of English settlements before eventually being defeated by English forces at Rhuddlan. He was later killed by his own followers.