Dictators, Tyrants And Other Oppressors Quiz

Answer: Nero

Some of these Emperors seem to have been a little immature and were adolescents when they started their career. Their youth may account for their hooligan behaviour. Nero was born in 37 AD and ruled from 54 till 68. He has a reputation for vandalism( setting Rome on fire) and killing his teachers (Seneca). Caligula started his rule the same year Nero was born and died in 41 AD, at the age of 29. He liked such practical jokes as appointing his horse as a Consul of Rome.
Domitian( born in AD 51) was thirty when he took power. He ruled from AD 81 till 96. Christians got on his nerves.
Vespasian was no youngster anymore when he became Emperor. Born in AD 9, he was Rome's supreme leader from 69 till 79.
He too felt that christians were killjoys.

Answer: Caligula

Born in 76 AD Hadrian was the Emperor of Rome from 117 till 138 AD. He does not have a reputation for cruelty, but for wise miltary strategy.
His famous "wall" between Carlisle and Newcastle-on-Tyne was probably much more a symbol than anything else. The wall told the Roman generals that that line was the limes where their expansive ambitions had to come to a halt because too large an Empire became logistically uncontrollable.
"Caligae" are the hobnailed sandals or boots worn by the legionaries.

Answer: Ivan the Terrible

Ivan was born in 1533 and became the first Czar of all Russia. He ruled from 1533 till 1584. Boris Godunov from 1598-1605. Peter the Great from 1682 till 1725. Catharina II or the Great from 1762 till 1796.

Answer: he adopted the name as a nom de guerre already in 1912 to cover his subversive activities

Using "undercover names" was a very common method of disguise among the Russian revolutionaries. Another nickname of his had been Koba.Also the name Lenin was a "nom de guerre". Lenin's real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.

Answer: Nicolae Ceaucescu

Ceaucescu made it to "Genius of the Carpathians" which is probably not a good omen, as intellectual supremacy hardly ever is a powerbasis.
Idi Amin, much more a brawny than a brainy chap, was called Dada, the meaning of which must be internationally clear as it is one of the typical sound-repetitive words that babies produce to refer to their closest of kin. Compare pappa,mamma, mummy, etc.
By the way also the word Pope derives from pappas father and so does abbot from abbas, itself from pappas.
In the West Stalin was called Uncle Joe during the Second World War when he was a friend of the G.I.'s, but to the Russians he of course was more than an uncle: "Daddy" Stalin.

This gave him a similar image as the one Attila the Hun had among his own tribesmen: Attila meaning 'Little Dad'. 'Atta' = dad. "Ila" is a diminutive. In German the name became Etzel and shows the link with such petnames as Christl,Fritzl,Gretl. Chrissie, Freddy and Maggie.
Also (Dr.) Francois Duvalier of Haiti became a Papa...

Answer: They wore black shirts and were called camicie nere.

The redshirts were Garibaldi's followers. Hitler's S.A.(STurmabteilung) wore brown shirts and sang songs about the "schwarzbraun" hazelnut they wanted to ressemble.
Of course Hitler's Schutzstaffel or Protective Echelon troops, the SS, wore black uniforms.

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Ceaucescu was the third child of simple peasants from the area of Scornicesti, where Nicolae was born on 26 January, 1918. He and his wife were shot by firing squad in Targoviste, 25 Dec., 1989.
Joseph Stalin was born at Gori in Georgia on 9 December, 1879. He was the son of a shoemaker. He died on 5th of March, 1953.
Benito Mussolini was the son of Allessandro Mussolini, the blacksmith
of Predappio. His mother, Rosa, was a school-teacher. Benito was born on July 29, 1883 and he and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by Italian irregular troops on 28th of April, 1945.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, as the fourth child of Alois Schickelgruber and Clara Hitler. His father was a customs-official at Braunau on the German-Austrian border.Later they moved to Passau. He killed himself on April 30, 1945.His death followed Mussolini's with only a couple of days.

Answer: Papa Doc's in Haiti

Vorster(born in Jamestown in the Cape Province in 1915) was Prime-Minister of South-Africa from 1966 till 1978, in which year he was elected President.A political scandal forced him to resign.He died in 1983 at Capetown.
King Faruk ruled from 1936 till 1952.
Papa Doc aka Francois Duvalier was born on 14 April 1907 at Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He died on 22nd of April 1971. He had been President since 1957.
His security troops were called "Tonton Macoute". Macoute = bogeyman. Tonton is a French pet form of "Oncle". Also Francois Mitterand was nicknamed Tonton.
According to Haitian tradition, at Christmas well-behaved kids got presents from "Tonton Noël". But the bad boys and girls were carried away by "Tonton Macoute" in his "macoute" or "rucksack".

Answer: Alexander the Great

Tamburlaine the Great aka Tamerlan or as Timur the Iron Man was born on April 8 1336 at Hodjar Ulgar 100 kms south of Samarkand. He died on 19th of January 1405 at Otrar, when on his way with his army to attack China.
Ghenghis Khan was an earlier Mongol ruler, who was born around 1165, and died August 1227.
We have to return farther back in time to come across Attila, the King of the Huns. He lived in the fifth century AD and was born ca. 406. He ruled from 433 on till 453.
But the earliest in history came the Macedonian-born Alexander the Great.(356-323). He was born at Pella in Macedonia, married a Bactrian princess, Roxana, in 327 BC, but had as his "significant other" a boy-friend of the name of Hephaistion Amyntoros.

Answer: Josef Stalin

Another ex-seminarist who played a major role in politics was the French "foreign affairs expert" Francois Talleyrand (1754-1838). Talleyrand received minor orders in 1774 and even was ordained in 1779 at the age of 25. He never led the life of a priest however, and his entry into a seminary had not exactly been for very pure motives.
Mao Zedong was born on Dec.26, 1893, at Shao Shan, a village in Hunan province. He died on Sept.9th 1976.
Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica.
Died on May 6, 1821, probably from stomach cancer.