Romanov dynasty

On 9 July 1762, Catherine rode into St Petersburg in a borrowed Guards uniform, won over three regiments in a morning, and forced her husband, Peter III, to sign away the Russian throne by nightfall. He was dead within eight days; she reigned for the next thirty-four years.

A boy tsar in 1613, a revolutionary pamphlet in 1848, a president's flight in 2014 — all on 21 February, all part of the same unfinished argument about Russia.