The end of the Romanovs

After the success of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated in 1917. He and his family were taken to Yekaterinburg, where they were kept as prisoners and finally executed under direct orders of Lenin in 1918. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave and forgotten for decades.

Romanov's family. Picture from www.historyandwomen.com

The Puffin's Lair - Tamed foxes in Russia

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love dogs and those who prefer cats. Until now.

Russian scientist Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev strongly believed that foxes can become the new human's best friend. He and his team spent more than 50 years trying to domesticate silver foxes, a melanistic form of the red fox -Vulpes vulpes.
The experiments began in the Soviet Union in 1959 and continue until today, carried out in the institute of Cytology and Genetics at Novosibirsk, Russia.