Head of State

Philip had transformed Macedon into the dominant power of Greece, defeating Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BCE and forming ...

Caesar had conquered Gaul, defeated Pompey in the civil war, and concentrated power in himself as dictator perpetuo, king in all b...

Gaius Caesar Germanicus, called Caligula from a childhood nickname, ruled from 37 CE with extravagance and terror; ancient sources...

Commodus, son of the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius, ruled from 180 CE with growing autocracy and spectacle, fighting as a gl...

Pertinax, a respected elder general and city prefect, was proclaimed emperor after the assassination of Commodus and immediately a...

Aurelian, a Balkan soldier emperor, in five years reunified the fractured Roman Empire, defeating Palmyra under Zenobia and recove...

William of Orange, called the Silent, led the Dutch revolt against Habsburg Spain after the Duke of Alba terror councils and survi...

Henry of Navarre, a Protestant who converted to take the throne, had ended decades of religious civil war with the Edict of Nantes...

Gustav III had seized power in a bloodless coup of 1772, restoring royal authority, and pursued a flamboyant absolutist program of...

Spencer Perceval, Tory prime minister since 1809 amid the Napoleonic wars, was walking through the members lobby when Bellingham, ...

Days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, the celebrated actor and Confederate sympathizer Booth entered the presidentia...

Alexander II had emancipated the serfs in 1861 and reformed courts and local government, but the pace of change bred both revoluti...

Garfield, a Civil War general and compromise presidential choice, had barely taken office when Guiteau, a failed lawyer and religi...

Marie Francois Sadi Carnot, grandson of the organizer of revolutionary armies, was elected president in 1887 and restored prestige...

Elisabeth, called Sisi, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, was a celebrated beauty and restless traveler who spent long years away from...

Umberto had reigned since 1878 through colonial defeat at Adwa and years of social unrest. After his general Bava Beccaris cannona...

Empress Myeongseong, called Queen Min, was the dominant political figure at the Korean court, steering policy toward Russia to che...

McKinley, victor of the war with Spain and architect of American overseas expansion, was greeting the public in the Temple of Musi...

Carlos I had accepted the rotativist parliamentary decay of the monarchy and, after the 1906 crisis, allowed the dictator Joao Fra...

Narutowicz, a professor of engineering and foreign minister, was elected president by the national assembly with the votes of the ...

Doumer, a veteran republican of the Dreyfus era, governor of Indochina and finance minister, was elected president in 1931 and pre...

Alexander, the warrior king who had made himself dictator after the parliament crisis of 1929, arrived in France to strengthen the...

Faisal II, young king under the regency and then rule shadowed by his uncle the crown prince Abd al-Ilah and prime minister Nuri a...

Abdullah, who had led the Arab Legion into Palestine in 1948 and annexed the West Bank, was suspected by Palestinian nationalists ...

Olympio, an economist trained in the City of London, had led Togo to independence from French trusteeship in 1960 as a genuine mul...

Castillo Armas, an army colonel, had been chosen by the CIA operation PBSUCCESS to lead the invasion force that overthrew the elec...

Trujillo had ruled the Dominican Republic since 1930 through terror, cult, and ownership of half the economy, naming the capital a...

Riding through Dealey Plaza in an open limousine, Kennedy was struck by rifle fire from the Texas School Book Depository; he died ...

Diem, the Catholic mandarin president backed by Washington since 1955, had lost Buddhist support after the Thich Quang Duc self-im...

Verwoerd, prime minister since 1958 and former minister of native affairs, was the chief theoretician of grand apartheid, the arch...

Park, the general who seized power in 1961 and drove the industrial miracle while strangling dissent under the Yushin constitution...

Sadat, who had launched the 1973 crossing of the canal and then traveled to Jerusalem in 1977 for the Camp David peace, faced conv...

Gandhi, daughter of Nehru and prime minister for most of the years since 1966, had ordered the army into the Golden Temple in June...

Premadasa, the first head of state from the lower urban castes, had risen from municipal politics through the UNP to the presidenc...

Rabin, the soldier of the 1948 war and 1967 victory turned diplomat of Oslo, had signed the agreement with Arafat and King Hussein...

Kabila, the veteran guerrilla who had marched to power at the head of the Rwanda and Uganda backed alliance in 1997, had broken wi...

Moise, a businessman elected in 2016 and ruling by decree after parliament lapsed, faced gangs, protests, and constitutional dispu...

Domitian, son of Vespasian and brother of Titus, ruled Rome from 81 CE with increasing autocracy, styling himself master and god a...

Caracalla became sole emperor after having his brother and co-ruler Geta killed in 211, followed by a purge of thousands of suppor...

Umar succeeded Abu Bakr as caliph in 634 and presided over the rapid expansion of the early Islamic state, which took Syria, Iraq,...

Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, became caliph in 656 after the killing of Uthman, and his reign was dominated ...

James I spent eighteen years as a captive in England before returning to Scotland in 1424, determined to impose royal authority ov...

Henry III reigned during the French Wars of Religion, caught between Protestant Huguenots and the militant Catholic League led by ...

Paul I, son of Catherine the Great, reversed many policies of his mother and alienated the nobility and officer corps with erratic...

Francisco Madero, a wealthy landowner from Coahuila, launched the Mexican Revolution in 1910 with the Plan of San Luis Potosi agai...

Inukai Tsuyoshi was a veteran liberal politician who became Prime Minister of Japan in December 1931 at the age of seventy-six. He...

Liaquat Ali Khan was a leading figure of the All-India Muslim League and the closest lieutenant of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the move...

Faisal bin Abdulaziz became king in 1964 after the deposition of his brother Saud and pursued cautious modernization, expanding ed...

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, called Bangabandhu or friend of Bengal, led the Awami League and the movement for autonomy of East Pakistan...

Thomas Sankara, an army captain, came to power in Upper Volta in 1983 and renamed the country Burkina Faso, land of upright people...