30 December

Rasputin is killed at the Yusupov palace on the Moika in the early hours, and his body is pushed under the ice of the Little Nevka.

Rasputin Never caught

Poisoned cakes, a man who would not die, a body under the ice: the famous story comes from one of Rasputin's killers. The autopsy tells a plainer one.

Van Meegeren dies in an Amsterdam clinic, aged 58.

Han van Meegeren Convicted

Arrested in 1945 for selling a Vermeer to Göring, a Dutch painter saved himself by proving he had painted it. Then he had to prove he had faked the rest.