Ive always had an interest in rasputin but just never got quite into the subject.
Is it true he was supposedly shot dead and dumped in a river but then was actually found to have died from drowning and not from the bullets?
Specifically, they tried to poison him with cakes laced with cyanide. That didn't work as its probable that the cyanide vaporized during the baking process. The conspirators, a group of boyars (Russian nobles) and a British SIS agent led by Prince Yusupov and Duke Pavlovich, got nervous when he didn't drop dead from what they thought was enough cyanide to kill 5 men, so they shot him.
They left the room to plan of how to dispose of the body and Yusupov who fired the shot returned to get his coat and check on the body. Rasputin leaped up and strangled him, according to legend even hissing, "You bad boy," as he tried to throttle the life out of his would-be killer.
The other conspirators heard the noise, came in, and shot Rasputin three more times. He lived through that too, so they proceeded to beat the living hell out of him. That didn't kill him either, so they wrapped him in a sheet and threw him in the river.
His body was found three days later and the bastard had obviously made a hell of an effort to claw his way out. There is some speculation over whether he died of drowning... or hypothermia. If it were really the latter, that means he could have survived had he another minute or two to get free.
His remains were interred in an Eastern Orthodox cemetery, but enemies he had made dug up his body and burned it in a bonfire. Unfortunately, they didn't know that when cremating a body, you need to sever the tendons because they shrink when burned. The result was that the corpse sat up while engulfed in flames, most likely resulting in everyone present needing a new pair of pants and years of powerful psychotherapy.
Please keep in mind that this all took place two years after he survived being almost eviscerated by a prostitute in public in 1914. She stabbed him in the gut after being paid to kill him, convinced that he was the Anti-Christ.
And then of course there's that letter I mentioned in which he predicted he would not live to see the new year (he died on December 16), predicted a rebellion if he was assassinated by boyars (both of which came to pass), and that if one of the assassins was indeed related to Czar Nicholas (Duke Pavlovich was the czar's cousin), then none of the Romanov's would survive another two years. That they would all be assassinated by the Russian people (I think we all know how that went down).
This goes down in history as one of the most insanely creepy things ever.
