RUSSIA. — Czar Nicholas II, full name Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, was the last crowned Emperor of Russia. He ruled from 1894 until he was forced to abdicate in 1917 amidst a civil war following World War I.
A year later, on July 17, 1918, he and his wife, together with their five children, the family doctor and three attendants, were taken to the cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg.
They were told to line up for a family portrait, but instead, a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky burst in and began firing, killing the family and servants.
Attempts were made to hide the evidence of the bodies, disposing of them down a mine shaft.
As rumours of what had happened began to surface, Yurovsky removed the bodies and buried most of them in a sealed and concealed pit.
It was not until the 1970s that geologists found some of the remains, and the 1990s that the bodies of the Romanovs were located, exhumed, and formally identified.
