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  • 20 - Alexis Brimeyer.

    20 - Alexis Brimeyer.
    Jun 12 2026
    Alexis Brimeyer. Alex Ceslaw Maurice Jean Brimeyer (4 May 1946 – 27 January 1995) was a pretender who claimed connection to various European thrones. He used fraudulent combined titles such as "Prince d'Anjou Durazzo Durassow Romanoff Dolgorouki de Bourbon-Condé". He authored the highly controversial book, Moi Petit-Arriere-Fils du Tsar. He also sold false titles of nobility through "orders" that he and his associates had created. Early life. Alex Brimeyer was born on 4 May 1946 in Costermansville (now Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo). His parents were the engineer Victor Brimeyer and his wife, Beatrice Dolgoruky, daughter of Ceclava Czapska. Noble pretender. Brimeyer's first attempt to ennoble himself came when he named himself, Brimeyer de la Calchuyére, in the 1950s when he was about ten years old. This came to nothing. In 1955, he took a name, His Serene Highness Prince Khevenhüller-Abensberg, but the real Princess Khevenhüller threatened to sue him. He backpedaled and apologized. Brimeyer also wrote to a number of aristocrats to convince them to adopt him. In 1969, he received a passport of the Principality of Sealand with the name His Highness Prince Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki. When he contacted a Brussels Orthodox priest, Jean Maljinowski, to be baptized, the priest was suspicious since the supposed prince did not speak a word of Russian. He commissioned two death certificates to be published in Le Soir. Through them, he claimed that Nikolai Dolgorouki, his supposed father, had used a pseudonym of Nicholas di Fonzo to escape the October Revolution and lived under the name. In actuality, the Bolsheviks executed the real Nikolai Dolgorouki after the Revolution. Khevenhüller trial. Princess von Khevenhüller-Metsch, Princess Maria Dolgoroukova and Prince Alexander Pavlovich Dolgorouki sued Brimeyer. They charged that Brimeyer was using their noble titles with malicious intent. The prosecutor presented a large number of fraudulent documents, including letters where Emperor Charles V supposedly ennobles Brimeyer. The court noted that his claim of marriage between his "grandfather", Prince Dolgorouki, and his "grandmother", Maria Nikolaevna (who was long mistakenly thought by some to have survived the execution of the Romanov family in July 1918), was false. On 24 November 1971, Brimeyer was sentenced to jail for 18 months but had fled to Greece from where he sent a letter to the prosecutor. In it he claimed descent from the Emperors of Byzantium. In Greece Brimeyer presented himself in the police station, and said that his passport had been stolen. He requested temporary documents. He registered then himself as Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki and for the next ten years he used those documents to "prove" his status. "I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar". In 1979 Brimeyer was living in Spain and contacted the cadet line of the Anjou Durassos. He convinced some of them to give their support and recognize him as the head of the royal house of Anjou-Durazzo. In 1982 he published a book "I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar" by "H.R.H. Prince Alexis d'Anjou Romanov-Dolgorouki, Duke of Durazzo". The book included a "will" where Vassili d'Anjou Durassow supposedly recognized him as his only son. Thus he claimed connection to the Capetian House of Anjou and the throne of Naples. Alexis was certain that Victor Brimeyer was not his father. He claimed that after his mother divorced Brimeyer she married Vassili d'Anjou Durassow on 15 April 1947 and that he was born in 1948. This supposed marriage was then annulled and she married Prince Igor Dolgorouki on 6 September 1948, divorcing him shortly thereafter and marrying Joseph Fabry in 1950. Ties to the House of Condé. In August 1984, Alexis' mother, Beatrice, married Bruce Conde, an imposter to the Princes of Condé. After the wedding, he adopted Brimeyer. This gave Alexis an excuse to add the title Bourbon-Condé. Ties to Russia. Next, Alexis claimed that as his father was the son of Prince Dolgorouki and that Prince Dolgorouki had married the supposedly escaped Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, and that his mother was their only daughter. Alexis claimed that his grandfather had been elected Volodar of Ukraine and persuaded a few orthodox priests that he was the heir to a throne. Through the Grand Duchess, Alexis claimed a connection to the Romanovs and the Russian throne. Serbian throne. He sent numerous letters to King Juan Carlos of Spain and demanded his recognition. He married and had a son. He also managed to convince the British College of Arms to include himself in documents. Lord Mountbatten of Burma wrote to him on 3 January 1977, addressing him as Prince Dolgorouky as a courtesy. In 1992, two Greater Serbian nationalists, including Vojislav Šešelj, visited Brimeyer in Spain. Supposedly they offered him the throne of Serbia. He told journalists that he had been in touch with Slobodan ...
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    7 Min.
  • 19 - Helga de la Brache.

    19 - Helga de la Brache.
    Jun 12 2026
    Helga de la Brache. Helga de la Brache (born Aurora Florentina Magnusson; 6 September 1817 in Stockholm – 11 January 1885), was a Swedish con artist. She obtained a royal pension by convincing the authorities that she was the secret legitimate daughter of King Gustav IV of Sweden and Queen Frederica of Baden. Fraud. In 1861, a woman by the name Helga de la Brache petitioned the government of King Charles XV for a pension with the claim of being the secret legitimate daughter of Gustav IV of Sweden, who had been deposed and exiled in the Coup of 1809. She was born poor. The exiled Gustav IV and Frederica of Baden had divorced in 1812. News of Gustav IV and his family was banned in Sweden since his exile. Helga de la Brache claimed that the former king and queen had married again, secretly, "in a convent in Germany", which resulted in her birth in Lausanne in 1820. She was sent to Sweden to be raised by her alleged father's aunt, Princess Sophia Albertine of Sweden. When the Princess died in 1829, Helga was taken to the Vadstena asylum, so that she would be seen as insane, and her true identity kept a secret. She was released in 1834 and taken to her family in Baden, where she was placed under house arrest. In 1837, she read about the death of her father in the paper, and was not able to conceal her grief. She was again placed in an asylum in Sweden, to prevent her true identity being made public. She eventually managed to escape from the asylum. She was provided for by the charity of people who supported her claims, and was soon granted a pension of 6,000 § from her mother's family in Germany. In 1850, the pension stopped, and she was unable to continue the life to which she accustomed by birth. This was to the reason to why she was forced to ask the government for an allowance. She was also forced to support her many faithful friends, who had stood by her during her years of persecution. Because of this, no smaller pension than 5,000 or 6,000 would be sufficient. Her story was believed by many people in Sweden and Finland, and she was given financial support from private benefactors. Followed by her faithful lady's companion, who was an educated and cultivated woman who supported her story, de la Brache acted with a combination of simplicity and naivete. Her way of acting gave the impression that she was not cunning enough to have made up the story, and yet sensible enough for people to believe that she was not insane, but fully believed her own claim. One of the reasons why such a story could be believed was that all contact with the deposed former dynasty in exile was forbidden after the Coup of 1809, which made it hard to verify and examine the alleged family relations. In 1859, de la Brache and her companion arrived in the capital of Stockholm. They lived as guests at the home of the upper class woman and professor's wife Lidbeck, who believed the story about the secret royal birth. Lidbeck's daughter Mrs Sandströmer introduced them to Frances Lewin-von Koch. She convinced the salon hostess Frances Lewin-von Koch (1804–1888), the British born spouse of the minister of justice, Nils von Koch, who housed her and provided her with a lawyer. Through Frances Lewin-von Koch she also convinced her husband the Justice Minister. She also convinced the parliamentary Anders Uhr and the Royal Court Chaplain Carl Norrby. She was however seen as a fraud by Prime Minister Louis Gerhard De Geer and Foreign Minister Ludvig Manderström. Queen Mother Josefina took a personal interest in her, and provided her with an allowance. The king did not take much interest, but wanted to get the whole affair over and done with. She was granted a meeting with the king who afterward remarked to the parliamentarians: "Why, she is just as sane as you or me". The claim of de la Brache's royal birth was presented to the king's government by Nils von Koch in behalf of de la Brache on 26 March 1861. While Nils von Koch stated that he, having made inquiries, could not confirm her claim to be true, neither could he prove it to be impossible, and supported her request. The king granted de la Brache a pension "without being able to prove the claims of Miss de la Brache to be truthful or merely claimed as a consequence of a confused imagination". In March 1861, the king allowed her an annual pension from the foreign department of 2,400 Swedish riksdaler a year (the amount originally 1,200, was increased in December 1869). Her pension was enlarged in 1868 on request by author August Blanche and captain Julius Mankell, and again in 1869, out of consideration for her financial distress. She kept up her claim for several years, and continued to receive the allowance. Exposure. In 1870, however, she was publicly exposed as a fraud. While her royal birth as such was in no way supported by the king or government, the fact that she had received a pension after having claimed royal birth did give her claims some ...
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    12 Min.
  • 18 - Marga Boodts.

    18 - Marga Boodts.
    Jun 12 2026
    Marga Boodts. Marga Boodts (February 18, 1895 – October 13, 1976) was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinberg on July 18, 1918. She stands out, however, as one of very few who claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar's oldest daughter. She was also known as Maria Bottcher. Purported escape from Russia. By her own account, Marga Boodts survived the execution at Yekaterinberg when a member of the firing squad, whom she identified only as Dimitri K., knocked her unconscious and pretended that she was dead. Dimitri K., who had been a Cossack soldier, replaced her missing corpse with that of a young woman who had been caught stealing from the bodies of the other members of the Imperial family. He later accompanied her to Vladivostok. Boodts claimed that upon her arrival to Vladivostok she was received by a German elite commando, and from Vladivostok, she reputedly said to have traveled through China and later she was taken by sea to Germany. Re-emergence and life in Europe. Boodts took her surname from Carlo Boodts, a German officer whom she married in Berlin on May 5, 1926 and divorced two years later. It was also while living in Germany that she claimed to have traveled to Doorn, the Netherlands, and visited Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), who recognized her as Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. He apparently provided her with financial support for the remainder of his lifetime. She recalled that she had also promised the former Kaiser that she would never reveal her Imperial identity, and would "keep the secret of my survival throughout my life". According to Boodts, the former Kaiser chose the daughter of a friend, Baroness Elisabeth von Schevenbach, to pick her up upon her arrival to Hamburg, and asked her to take care and provide Mrs. Boodts with accommodation. Boodts lived with Frau von Schevenbach for a few years at Potsdam, and later moved to Berlin. She also lived in a state near Stralsund, in eastern Germany. Boodts' claim gained further credence from 1957, when she was recognised by Prince Sigismund of Prussia (1896–1978), who was a first cousin of the actual Grand Duchess Olga. He, in turn, introduced Boodts to Nikolaus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1897–1970), a godson of Tsar Nicholas II, who provided her with financial support until his own death in 1970. In 1974, Prince Sigismund remained convinced of Boodts' authenticity. As he told journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold, "we spoke about so many familiar matters that an outsider could not have known about, because they were things that had happened between us two". They maintained correspondence until 1976 when she died. There are 530 letters kept in a private archive in Italy as evidence of that relation. In 1958 Princess Charlotte Agnes of Saxe-Altenburg also visited Marga Boodts, together with her brother Prince Frederick Ernst of Saxe-Altenburg. Prince Sigismund and Princess Charlotte both provided affidavits that the woman living at Lake Como was indeed Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. During that period, Boodts is also said to have received financial support from Pope Pius XII. Mother Pascalina Lehnert, governess of Pope Pius XII, declared in 1983 to have witnessed the special meetings between Boodts and the Pope and said that he acknowledged her as the real Grand Duchess Olga of Russia. Living in Lake Como, Boodts remained in relative obscurity for many years and thus managed to avoid the sensational press coverage (and the suspicion of surviving Romanov descendants) that had long plagued her rival Imperial pretender, the notorious Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1955 she signed a contract with Mondadori editorial of Italy to publish her memoirs "Io Vivo" (I am alive) as a book. In spite of the contract the book was never published in Italy but in Spain in 2011 by Editorial Martinez Roca becoming a sensational editorial success. Close friends of the Grand Duchess blamed The Vatican for interfering with the publication, due to a legal case pending at the Tribunal of First Instance of the Vatican and the alleged Olga Romanov. Again in 1960, when Anna Anderson took her case to the Hamburg Courts, Boodts decided to make her own claims public. In an interview with United Press International, Boodts insisted that she had seen "her sister Anastasia" executed at Yekaterinberg, and had now come forward in an effort to discredit the "impostor" in Germany. She further stated that she was considering legal action of her own against Anderson, and was willing to "step into the Hamburg Courts to unmask her". Boodts, at that time was very aware that her benefactor, Prince Sigismund of Prussia, was also a firm supporter of Anderson's claims. Indeed, some of ...
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    11 Min.
  • 17 - Bardiya.

    17 - Bardiya.
    Jun 12 2026
    Bardiya. Bardiya or Smerdis possibly died 522 BCE, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BCE, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumata, whose name is given by Ctesias as Sphendadates, until he was toppled by Darius the Great. Name and sources. The prince's name is listed variously in the historical sources. In Darius the Great's Behistun inscription, his Persian name is Bardiya or Bardia. Herodotus calls him Smerdis, which is the prevalent Greek form of his name; the Persian name has been assimilated to the Greek (Asiatic) name Smerdis or Smerdies, a name which also occurs in the poems of Alcaeus and Anacreon. Bardiya is called Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, who also names Gaumāta as Sphendadates; he is called Tanooxares by Xenophon, who takes the name from Ctesias, and he is called Mergis and Merdis by Justin and Merdis by Aeschylus. In English-language histories he has traditionally been called Smerdis, following Herodotus' example, but recent histories tend to call him Bardiya. Traditional view. The traditional view is based on several ancient sources, including the Behistun inscription as well as Herodotus, in Ctesias, and Justin, although there are minor differences among them. The three oldest surviving sources agree that Gaumata/Pseudo-Smerdis/Sphendadates was overthrown by Darius and others in a coup d'état, and that Darius then ascended the throne. Most sources (including Darius himself, Herodotus and Ctesias) have Darius as part of a group of seven conspirators. In Greek and Latin sources, Darius subsequently gained kingship by cheating in a contest. Bardiya was the younger son of Cyrus the Great and a full or half-brother of Cambyses II. According to Ctesias, on his deathbed Cyrus appointed Bardiya as satrap (governor) of some of the far-eastern provinces. According to Darius the Great, Cambyses II, after becoming king of Persia but before setting out for Egypt, killed Bardiya and kept this secret. However, according to Herodotus (who gives two detailed stories), Bardiya went to Egypt with Cambyses and was there for some time but later Cambyses sent him back to Susa out of envy, because "Bardiya alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian king." Herodotus then states that "Cambyses had a dream in which he saw his brother sitting on the royal throne. As a result of this dream Cambyses sent his trusted counselor Prexaspes from Egypt to Susa with the order to kill Smerdis" (i.e., Bardiya). Bardiya's death was not known to the people, and so in the spring of 522 BC, a usurper pretended to be him and proclaimed himself king on a mountain near the Persian town of Paishiyauvada. Darius claimed that the real name of the usurper was Gaumata, a Magian priest from Media; this name has been preserved by Justin but given to his brother (called Patizeithes by Herodotus), who is said to have been the real promoter of the intrigue. According to Herodotus, the name of the Magian usurper was Oropastes, but according to Ctesias it was Sphendadates. The despotic rule of Cambyses, coupled with his long absence in Egypt, contributed to the fact that "the whole people, Persians, Medes and all the other nations," acknowledged the usurper, especially as he granted a tax relief for three years. Cambyses began to march against him, but died in the spring of 522 BC in disputed circumstances. Before his death he confessed to the murder of his brother, and publicly explained the whole fraud, but this was not generally believed. Nobody had the courage to oppose the new king, who ruled for seven months over the whole empire. The new king transferred the seat of government to Media. A number of Persian nobles discovered that their new ruler was an impostor, and a group of seven nobles formed a plot to kill him. In September 522 BC they surprised him at a castle in Nisa (on the Nisaean plain) and stabbed him to death. One of the seven, Darius, was proclaimed as ruler shortly after. While the primary sources do not agree on the names and many other details, the three oldest surviving sources (Darius himself, Herodotus and Ctesias) all portray Gaumata/Pseudo-Smerdis/Sphendadates as an imposter who usurped the throne by posing as one of the sons of Cyrus the Great, i.e. as one of the brothers of Cambyses II. In Darius' trilingual Behistun inscription, the prince being impersonated is named "Pirtiya" in Elamite, "Bardiya" in Old Persian, and "Barziya" in Akkadian. In Herodotus' Histories, the prince and his imposter have the same name (Smerdis). For Ctesias, Sphendadates poses as 'Tanyoxarces'. Other Greek sources have various other names for the figure being impersonated, including 'Tanoxares', 'Mergis' and 'Mardos'. In Herodotus' Histories. A longer version of the story appears in Book 3 of ...
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    14 Min.
  • 16 - Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance.

    16 - Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance.
    Jun 12 2026
    Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long; December 1, 1890 – March 20, 1932) was a mixed race Native-American journalist, writer and film actor, believed today to be of Lumbee descent, who, for a time, became internationally prominent as a spokesman for Native American causes. He published an autobiography, purportedly based on his experience as the son of a Blackfoot chief. He was the first presumed Native American admitted to the Explorers Club in New York City. It has been traditionally speculated whether Long was of any indigenous ancestry; he claimed to be of mixed Cherokee, white and black heritage, at a time when Southern society imposed strict binary divisions of heritage in a racially-segregated society. After his tribal claims were unable to be verified and the truth about his African-American heritage came out, he was dropped by these same social circles to which he had gained entry. Today, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and other scholars generally consider Long to have been of Lumbee descent, an indigenous population known for its tri-racial heritage. During Long's lifetime, the Lumbee people were referred to by various names by the North Carolina General Assembly, including the "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County." This name lasted until 1956, when the population was formally redesignated by Congress as Lumbee. Early life and education. Long had ambitions that were larger than what he saw of his future in Winston, where his father Joseph S. Long was a janitor in the school system. In that segregated society, African Americans had limited opportunities. Long first left North Carolina to portray Indian characters in a "Wild West Show". During this time he continued to build upon his (later proven to be fraudulent) stories of being Cherokee. In 1909, Long claimed to be half Cherokee when he applied to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and was accepted. He also lied about his age to gain admission. He graduated in 1912 at the top of his class, which included prominent Native Americans such as Jim Thorpe and Robert Geronimo, a son of the famous Chiricahua-Apache warrior Geronimo. Long entered the St. John's and Manlius Military academies in Manlius, New York with a full musical scholarship, based on his performance at the Carlisle School. Career. Long went to Canada as an acting sergeant in 1919, requesting discharge at Calgary, Alberta. He worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald. Canada had de facto segregation and a climate in which the government had discouraged black immigration from the US. During this time in both Canada and the US it was common for those of African heritage to instead make false claims of Cherokee or Blackfoot. "It is not surprising that in such a climate...Long Lance felt that he was safer, and that he could go further, by disavowing any connection, cultural or racial, to blackness." Long presented himself as a Cherokee from Oklahoma and claimed he was a West Point graduate with the Croix de Guerre earned in World War I. For the next three years as a reporter, he covered Indian issues. He criticized government treatment of Indians and openly criticized Canada's Indian Act, especially their attempts at re-education and prohibiting the practice of tribal rituals. To a friend, Long justified his decision to assume a Blackfoot Indian identity by saying it would help him be a more effective advocate, that he had not lived with his own people since he was sixteen, and now knew more about the Indians of Western Canada. In 1924, Long Lance became a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Through these years, Long also entered the civic life of the city, by joining the local Elks Lodge and the militia, and coaching football for the Calgary Canucks. Due to Jim Crow laws, these activities would not have been possible had he honestly presented himself as a black man. He was a successful writer, publishing articles in national magazines, reaching a wide and diverse audience through Macleans and Cosmopolitan. By the time he wrote his autobiography in Alberta in 1927, Long claimed to be a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian. Autobiography and fame. Cosmopolitan Book Company commissioned Long's autobiography as a boy's adventure book on Indians. It published Long Lance in 1928, to quick success. In it, Long claimed to have been born a Blackfoot, son of a chief, in Montana's Sweetgrass Hills. He also said that he had been wounded eight times in the Great War and been promoted to the rank of captain. The popular success of his book and the international press made him a major celebrity. The book became an international bestseller and was praised by literary critics and anthropologists. Long had already been writing and lecturing on the life of Plains Indians. His celebrity gave him more venues and caused him to be taken up as part of the New York party life. More significantly, he was...
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    9 Min.
  • 15 - Asa Earl Carter.

    15 - Asa Earl Carter.
    Jun 12 2026
    Asa Earl Carter. Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American segregationist and Ku Klux Klan organizer who was prominent in the 1950s for his activism and later as a Western fiction novelist. He was particularly known for his work as a co-writer of George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama as a white supremacist. Later, under the pseudonym of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that was adapted into a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that was added to the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction. In 1976, following the success of The Rebel Outlaw and its film adaptation, The New York Times revealed Forrest Carter was actually Asa Carter. His background became national news again in 1991 after his purported memoir, The Education of Little Tree (1976), was re-issued in paperback, topping the Times paperback best-seller lists (both non-fiction and fiction) and winning the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award. Prior to his literary career as "Forrest", Carter was politically active for years in Alabama as an opponent of the civil rights movement. In the mid-1950s, he had a syndicated segregationist radio show, and worked as a speech writer for segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama. He also founded the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC), an independent offshoot of the White Citizens' Council movement formed by Carter when the White Citizens' Council tried to moderate Carter's antisemitism. He also formed the militant and violent Ku Klux Klan group known as the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, and started a monthly publication titled The Southerner which spread white supremacist and anti-communist rhetoric. Early life. Asa Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1925, the second eldest of four children. Despite later claims (as author "Forrest" Carter) that he was orphaned, he was raised by his parents Hermione and Ralph Carter in nearby Oxford, Alabama. Both parents lived into Carter's adulthood. Carter served in the United States Navy during World War II and for a year studied journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder on the G.I. Bill. After the war, he married India Thelma Walker. The couple settled in Birmingham, Alabama and had four children. His children were Ralph Walker Carter, Asa Earl Carter, both of Abilene, and Bedford Forrest Carter of Alabama; one daughter, India Lara Morgan of Jacksonville, Alabama. Career. Carter worked for several area radio stations before ending up at station WILD in Birmingham, where he worked from 1953 to 1955. Carter's broadcasts from WILD, sponsored by the American States Rights Association, were syndicated to more than 20 radio stations before the show was cancelled. Carter was fired following community outrage over his attacks on National Brotherhood Week, which promoted friendship with the Jewish community, and a boycott of WILD. Carter broke with the leadership of the Alabama Citizens' Council movement over the incident. He refused to reduce his antisemitic rhetoric, and the Citizens' Council preferred to focus on preserving racial segregation against African Americans. Carter started a renegade group called the North Alabama Citizens' Council. In addition to his careers in broadcasting and politics, Carter during these years ran a filling station.  By March 1956, he was making national news as a spokesman for segregation. Carter was quoted by United Press International as saying that the NAACP had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with "immoral" rock and roll records. Carter called for jukebox owners to purge all records by black performers from jukeboxes. Carter made the national news again on September 1 and 2 of the same year, after he gave an inflammatory anti-integration speech in Clinton, Tennessee. He addressed Clinton's high school enrollment of 12 black students, and after his speech, an aroused mob of 200 white men stopped black drivers passing through, "ripping out hood ornaments and smashing windows". They were heading for the house of the mayor before being turned back by the local sheriff. Carter appeared in Clinton alongside segregationist John Kasper, who was charged later that same month with sedition and inciting a riot for his activities that day. Later that year, Carter ran for a position on the Birmingham City Commission as the Commissioner For Public Safety against former office holder Eugene "Bull" Connor, who won that election in 1957. As with most elections during this time of poll taxes and segregation, the only competitive campaigning was done for the Democratic Party primary. Connor later became nationally famous...
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    20 Min.
  • 14 - John Deydras.

    14 - John Deydras.
    Jun 12 2026
    John Deydras.
    John Deydras (died 1318), also known as John of Powderham, was a pretender to the English throne during the reign of Edward II. He was executed by hanging and his body was burnt.

    Background.
    By 1318, Edward II of England was increasingly unpopular in England as a result of his style of government and his defeats while fighting Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Opposition was growing to his rule, when a young clerk in Oxford, John Deydras, also known as John of Powderham, issued claims that he was in fact the rightful heir to the throne.

    Deydras' claims and execution.
    Deydras arrived at Beaumont Palace in Oxford in early 1318, and claimed it for his own. He was, he said, really the King of England, and observers noted that he closely resembled Edward, being tall and good-looking. Unlike the king, Deydras, however, was missing an ear. Deydras explained that as a baby, the royal servant charged to look after him had allowed him to be attacked by a sow while he was playing in the castle courtyard, which had bitten off his ear. Knowing that she would have been severely punished by the King, she had replaced him with a carter's baby, who had then grown up to become Edward II, while Deydras had been given to the carter to be brought up in poverty. This explained, said Deydras, Edward's style of government and his strange dislike of martial activities – notoriously, Edward enjoyed many rustic, lower class pursuits such as ditch digging and farming. Deydras offered to fight Edward in single combat for the throne. Rumours began to spread across England.
    Deydras was finally arrested and brought to Edward at Northampton. Deydras insulted the king, again offered to fight him in single combat and repeated his claims about Edward's parentage, resulting in a trial for sedition. Deydras confessed during the trial to having made up his story, blaming his pet cat which he said was the devil in disguise, who had led him astray one day while he was walking across Christ Church Meadows. Found guilty, both he and his cat were hanged and Deydras' body burnt.

    Legacy.
    Today, Deydras is believed to have been mentally ill; his story is not believed to have been true. Modern historians cite the case of Deydras as an example of the growing unhappiness with Edward II's rule during the period, and the protracted case appears to have deeply affected Isabella of France, Edward's wife, who felt humiliated by the event.


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    3 Min.
  • 13 - Mary Baynton.

    13 - Mary Baynton.
    Jun 12 2026
    Mary Baynton.
    Mary Baynton (born approximately 1515) was a woman from England, who claimed to be the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She made the claim in Boston, Lincolnshire, and it appears that the claims were taken seriously in the turbulent times. However, after investigation, she was dismissed as a lunatic and subsequently ignored.

    Biography.
    Mary Baynton was born in approximately 1515, daughter of Thomas Baynton who lived in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire. In September 1533, when Mary was 18, she publicly announced to the town of Boston, Lincolnshire, that she was Princess Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Princess Mary had been declared illegitimate and removed from the line of succession a few months earlier when Henry had repudiated the authority of the Pope. Amongst the confusion caused by these political events, Baynton's claims were considered seriously, with some individual even offering to fund her travel to Spain to win support to be recognised as heir to the throne.
    Baynton was arrested and investigated by officials, who dismissed her as a 'self-deluded lunatic'. She has been investigated by several historians, however it is uncertain what happened to her. It appears she was left alone, and settled down to a quiet life.


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    2 Min.