The death of George V in the very first days of 1936 was not natural

The death of George V in the very first days of 1936 was not natural. The king's physician administered to him a lethal mixture of morphine and cocaine. By then the king had lapsed into a coma owing to bronchial complications. It is believed that the royal physician wished to spare the family, to protect the dignity of a king in an extremely grave condition, and to make sure that the news of the king's death appeared in The Times rather than in the evening tabloids. That the British monarch had died by euthanasia became known only in 1986, from an article in History Today.

In 1953 Queen Mary of Teck likewise departed this life, falling asleep after injections of tranquillisers and morphine

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

The death of George V in the very first days of 1936 was not natural

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s