{"id":4297,"date":"2012-05-24T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=4297"},"modified":"2012-05-24T04:42:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T08:42:43","slug":"dictators-and-their-eccentricities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2012\/dictators-and-their-eccentricities\/","title":{"rendered":"Dictators And Their Eccentricities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/052412_0324_DictatorsAn1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In light of the release of Sacha Baron Cohen latest film, The Dictator, Helier Cheung took a look at some real life autocrats whose eccentricities have come to define their reign. They include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>Emperor Caligula of Rome<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>His love of race horses led him to give his favourite horse an army of slaves who served the horse wine in golden goblets.<\/li>\n<li>His troops were ordered to collect sea shells during a fight against the British.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>Francois Duvalier of Haiti<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>He believed that voodoo spirits guarded him on the 22<sup>nd<\/sup> of every month and refused to leave his palace on any other day.<\/li>\n<li>He believed that a voodoo curse he placed on US President John F. Kennedy led to his assassination on the 22<sup>nd<\/sup> of November.<\/li>\n<li>He banned the boy scouts.<\/li>\n<li>Some reports suggest he killed all black dogs in Haiti.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>The 150m tall gold statue that he had built of himself was made to revolve so that it always faced the sun.<\/li>\n<li>He named the month of January and a meteorite after himself.<\/li>\n<li>He had an ice palace built in the capital.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>Kim Jong-il of North Korea<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>State media reports that he scored a perfect 300 the first time he bowled, and had five holes-in-one the first time he golfed.<\/li>\n<li>His fear of flying meant that he travelled by train. He had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day.<\/li>\n<li>He loved movies so much that he kidnapped a South Korean film director and forced him to make films for the &#8220;Dear Leader&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To read why these men acted in these ways as well as more examples and other details, including the King of Scotland, the lake in the middle of a desert, and the double rainbow that appeared in the sky when one was born click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-17990615\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-17990615\">BBC<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In light of the release of Sacha Baron Cohen latest film, The Dictator, Helier Cheung took a look at some real life autocrats whose eccentricities have come to define their reign. They include: Emperor Caligula of Rome His love of race horses led him to give his favourite horse an army of slaves who served [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/052412_0324_DictatorsAn1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4297"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4312,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions\/4312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}