These are the list entries born in the modern country of Azerbaijan or the entries born in the geographic equivalent of the modern country.
Entries:
- Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina, Joseph Stalin's Second Wife
Category: Birth Locations
469) Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina
469: Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina
Josef Stalin’s Second Wife
Born: 22 September 1901, Baku, Russian Empire (Present-day Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan)
Died: 9 November 1932, Moscow, USSR (Present-day Moscow, Russia)
Though their age difference meant she could have been his daughter—Nadezhda was eighteen and he thirty-nine when they married.
They supposedly met when she was two years old and he saved her from drowning.
Nadezhda worked as a clerk/secretary in his office in the early days of the Communist Party before the Revolution. She became his assistant right after the October Revolution and would marry him in 1919—having two kids together, a boy named Vasily and a daughter named Svetlana (who was incredibly famous in her own life later on).
Nadya, as she was called, evidently hated life in the Kremlin. Stalin abused her and constantly flirted with other men’s wives.
In 1929, Nadya began to go to college for a chemistry degree to escape life in the Kremlin. Her fellow students didn’t know who she was and told her many horror stories of what her husband was doing. She confronted him and his response was to arrest all of her fellow students.
A few days before her death she told her friends nothing made her happy anymore; then the night of her death she got in a fight with Stalin and was found dead in bed with a revolver in hand beside a letter criticizing Stalin.
Stalin said she killed herself to punish him, but today some historians think she was murdered.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Sveltana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/14/world/soviet-ends-silence-on-stalin-wife-s-suicide.html
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7277/nadezhda-sergejevna-stalina
468) Amal Al-Sadah
468: Amal al-Sadah
One of Five of Osama Bin Laden’s Wives (Through an Arranged Marriage)
Born: 27 March 1982, Yemen
When they married, Amal was seventeen and Osama was forty-four. But its totally fine though because he gave her family $5,000 (sarcasm).
Family members reportedly remembered Amal saying before the 9/11 Attacks that she wished to stay by his side and be martyred with him.
She is the mother of five of his twenty-one children.
In May of 2011 she was shot in the knee during the United States Special Forces raid that killed her husband.
According to her brother in February of 2012 she was still being held (with her five children, two of Osama’s other wives, and four of his “grandchildren” which might have actually been his children) in Pakistan in a small apartment under lock and key. The children were not allowed out to attend school and Amal’s knee wound wasn’t treated properly.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/11/osama-bin-laden-wife
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/22/osama-bin-laden-wife-leave-pakistan-yemen
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/07/201378143840337727.html
Entries Born in Yemen
These are the entries born in the country of Yemen, or the geographical equivalent of where the country now stands.
Entries:
- Amal Al-Sadah, One of Osama Bin Laden's Five Wives
- Safia Farkash El Hadad, Former First Lady of Libya
467) Safia Farkash El Hadad
467: Safia Farkash El Hadad
Muammar Gaddafi’s Wife and The Former First Lady of Libya
Born: 1952, Al Bayda', Yemen
It is said Safia was a nurse who met Gaddafi after he was hospitalized and she nursed him back to health.
Safia is the mother of seven of Muammar’s eight biological children (he also had a ninth adopted daughter, who may have been killed at around only four years old in the 1980’s during a bombing raid).
In August of 2018 it was reported that Safia and her daughter Aisha were still on a travel ban and had no access to their bank accounts. Also, in 2018 it was said that Safia had not been given the information as to where her husband’s body was located.
Aisha, who is a UN ambassador and international lawyer, is kept under the travel ban alongside her children. They have not been allowed to leave Libya since 2011 and neither can they receive international calls.
Three of Gaddafi’s children were killed in the raids in 2011 while the other six remained imprisoned across multiple countries: Tripoli, Lebanon, Algeria, and Oman (this source, also from 2018, states that Aisha and Safia are in Algeria and that their travel bans were lifted in March of 2017).
Basically the details are hazy at best and no one for sure really knows anything for certain after the Libyan Uprising of 2011.
Sources:
466) Mary Toft
466: Mary Toft
Mary Tricked Doctors Into Making Them Think She Gave Birth to Rabbits
Born: 1701, Godalming, England
Died: 1763, Godalming, England
Alternate Spelling: Tofts
According to reports, in 1726 Mary (who was married and already a mother) suffered a miscarriage but a month later still looked pregnant and in September of that same year went into labor and gave birth to what looked like a liverless cat (whatever that is).
Over the next month she delivered more and more animal parts including a rabbit’s head, the legs of a cat, and nine dead baby rabbits in a single day.
The English King George I sent two men to investigate in November and they were witness to her “giving birth” to several more dead rabbits in their presence (totaling over fifteen now).
The doctors examined the rabbits and weren’t convinced that they had developed in Mary’s womb, but another man was still convinced and took specimen’s back for the king and prince of Wales to look at.
Finally, a German doctor was sent to examine the rabbits and determined one had straw and corn in its poop so obviously Mary Had not given birth to it. However other doctors still weren’t convinced until December of that year when Mary was forced to confess to allowing small rabbits to be manually inserted into her vaginal canal for her to pretend to give birth to. She was charged with being a “Notorious and Vile Cheat” and sent to prison.
Mary was released after a few months and pretty much lived in relative obscurity until her death.
Badges Earned:
Located in My Personal Library:
A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natasha Tidd
Sources:
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/aug2009.html
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mary-toft-gave-birth-to-rabbits
465) Bridget Driscoll
465: Bridget Driscoll
The First Person to be Killed by a Car in the United Kingdom
Born: 1851, Ireland
Died: 17 August 1896, Croydon, Surrey, United Kingdom
Bridget and her daughter were walking towards the Crystal Palace when she was struck and killed.
The inquest afterward found her death to be accidental because of the conflicting testimony between witnesses and the man driving the car.
In the earliest history of cars on the road, the speed limit set was two miles per hour (about three kilometers per hour) and a man was supposed to walk several yards in front of the car, waving a flag to warn of the oncoming car. Shortly before Bridget’s death, the speed limit had been raised to fourteen miles per hour (twenty-two kilometers per hour) and the law pertaining to a flag man was also done away with.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Sources:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33385219/bridget-driscoll
464) Ko Yong-hui
464: Ko Yong-hui
Kim Jong-il’s Wife and Kim Jong-Un’s Mother
Born: 26 June 1953, Osaka, Japan
Died: 24 May 2004, Paris, France
Also Known As: Ko Young-hee or Ko Yong-hŭi
She was a famous stage actress and was given the title of “Respected Mother” by her husband. What might be even more surprising is that she was born to an ethnically Korean father and an ethnically Japanese mother. Japan and North Korea are not, friendly, to say the least.
Yong-hui was killed in a car accident (or possibly died from a strange illness, or breast cancer, no one really seems to know).
Her sister, Ko Yong-Suk, defected from North Korea over twenty years ago with her husband and three children and is now living in the United States. In 1998, Yong-Suk and her husband decided to leave North Korea after Yong-hui was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Sources:
https://www.nknews.org/2018/03/cults-of-the-forgotten-wives-kim-song-ae-and-ko-yong-hui/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/179574701/yong_hui-ko
https://www.visitthedprk.org/the-little-known-story-of-kim-jong-uns-mother-ko-yong-hui/
463) Natalie Gulbis
463: Natalie Gulbis
Pro Golfer
Born: 7 January 1983, Sacramento, California, United States of America
Natalie plays on the US based LPGA Tour. As of December 2019, she has earned nearly $4.9 Million.
She has chronicled her numerous back problems and less than successful surgeries starting in 2008, all thanks to playing golf.
In 2005, she created the Natalie Gulbis Foundation, which supports several other charities including a Boys & Girls Club named after Natalie in Nevada.
Natalie said she was considering retiring but is still hanging in there for now.
Sources:
https://www.lpga.com/players/natalie-gulbis/80727/overview
https://www.lpga.com/players/natalie-gulbis/80727/bio
https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/meet-the-council/natalie-gulbis/index.html
462) Samira Shahbandar
462: Samira Shahbandar
Saddam Hussein’s Second Wife
Born: 1946, Baghdad, Iraq
Samira is also a former flight attendant.
She and Saddam started seeing each other while still married to other people and might have supposedly even gotten married during this time (her first husband wisely stepped out of the picture).
According to the UN Security Council, Samira and Saddam’s marriage only became public knowledge after Saddam’s son Uday (whom he shared with Sajida Talfah) had murdered the man who introduced his father and Samira.
As of 2003 it was reported she and their son were living a life of luxury in Lebanon, all thanks to the $5 Million in cash, gold, and jewelry Saddam sent Samira and Ali out of the country with.
Sources:
https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1518/materials/summaries/individual/samira-shahbandar
https://allthatsinteresting.com/sajida-talfah
https://mg.co.za/article/2003-12-14-saddams-wife-turned-him-in