Prince Felix Yuspusov wanted Rasputin dead, stone cold dead. He was just sick of Rasputin's influence on the royalty of Russia, and he decided to do something about it. Using the Czar's niece as bait (ol' Raspy couldn't resist a young, rich noblewoman), he got Rasputin in to a nice dinner in his cellar. Of course, the dinner included roughly 20 doses of cyanide in the food and wine...

Rasputin ate and drank lustily for a bit.

Rasputin appears a bit uncomfortable after a few glasses of wine and some sweetcakes, but a few more glasses of wine helps.

Contents of Rasputin's body: Approx. 4-5 glasses of wine and seven doses of cyanide.

So, of course, at this point he gets up and drunkenly plays a guitar in a corner for a while, and then asks Felix if they could go visit some gypsies 'with God on the mind, but with mankind in the flesh'.

Good old Felix does what we'd all do at this point. He freaks out and shoots Rasputin in the back. Rasputin keels over.

Contents of Rasputin's body: 4-5 glasses of wine, 7 doses of cyanide, 1 bullet

Felix moves Rasputin off of a nice carpet and goes upstairs. After a good half hour of chatting with friends, Felix goes back down to check on the body. Once Felix gets up close and checks for a pulse... Rasputin leaps up and attacks him!

Felix rips Rasputin's body off of him and runs! Rasputin follows, bellowing Felix's name! The chase goes outside of the manor...

Contents of Rasputin's body: 4-5 glasses of wine, 7 doses of cyanide, 1 bullet, not much blood

Rasputin staggers outside, screaming about how the Tsarina will be displeased with Felix for this. Thankfully, a conspirator follows Rasputin outside and shoots him four times, with two hits... one in the head.

Felix and friends haul Rasputin's limp ass down to a riverbank, and throw him in the water, to freeze in the Russian winter.

Contents of Rasputin's body: 4-5 glasses of wine, 7 doses of cyanide, 3 bullets, very little blood

The previous has been verified by historians, but legend tells that Rasputin was found in the morning, frozen in a twisted position that makes it look like he was fighting off drowning...



...As if this story wasn't surreal enough... Felix's friends were upstairs the whole time, listening to the only record they had, over and over. That record was Yankee Doodle Dandee.

Let us not forget the other documented assassination attempts, notably the successful stabbing on June 28th, 1914 - the same day Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot and killed by Gavrilo Princip of The Black Hand in what is now Sarajevo, touching off WWI. Previous to the above-mentioned successful assassination, he'd also been shot at least once and run over with a newfangled motorcar in attempts on his life.

In the words of 1789 And All That: In the end, Rusputin was painfully disposed of by being shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, beheaded, hanged, drawn, quartered and then fatally killed, after which he gradually died.

Generally you would think that cyanide, a highly potent drug, will efficiently kill a person. Especially with 7 doses, the target should be dead in no time. This is true, with one little exception that applied in this case:

Do not serve cyanide with wine.

The chemicals in wine act as a neutralising agent for cyanide, so along with giving Rasputin the poison, Felix Yuspusov was also giving him the antidote. Not a very smart thing to do, was it?

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