QUEEN FOR A DAY
As of 2018, the UK’s Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne (so to speak) for 66 years—longer than any other monarch in British history. Here are some leaders whose reigns were quite a bit shorter than that.
Ruler: “Unnamed daughter” of Emperor Xiaoming of the Chinese kingdom of Northern Wei (528–?)
Reign: A few hours
Details: Xiaoming was only five years old when he inherited the imperial throne in 515. Because of this, his mother, Empress Dowager Hu, ruled as regent in his name. But when the boy came of age, the empress dowager refused to surrender power. That led to a struggle between Hu and Xiaoming that ended only when she poisoned Xiaoming. By then the 18-year-old had fathered a daughter with one of his concubines, but because the child was female, she was ineligible to inherit the throne. Undeterred, the empress dowager passed off the child as a boy, and thus the new emperor, so that she could maintain power by serving as the child’s regent. A few hours after proclaiming the child emperor, she realized the ruse was not going to work, so she admitted the “boy” was a girl and proclaimed Xiaoming’s two-year-old male cousin, named Yuan Zhao, emperor instead. These shenanigans did not impress a general named Erzhu Rong. He marched on the capital, captured both the dowager empress and Yuan Zhao, and drowned them in the Yellow River.
Ruler: Pope Stephen (II) of the Roman Catholic Church (752)
Reign: Four days
Details: Stephen suffered a stroke three days after he was elected pope, and died the following day—before he could be consecrated as pope in a special ceremony. In those days, popes weren’t considered popes until the consecration took place, so for centuries the church did not recognize him as a pope. Only later, when being elected pope came to be seen as what counted, did the church add his name to the official list. Subsequent popes who took the name Stephen have two numbers beside their name: one number that doesn’t include Pope Stephen (II), and one (in parentheses) that does. The last was Pope Stephen IX (X), who ruled from 1057 to 1058.
Ruler: King John I “the Posthumous” of France and Navarre (1316)
Reign: Five days
Details: When King Louis X (Louis the Quarreler) died in 1316, his wife was four months pregnant with their unborn child. Louis already had a daughter, Joan, but if the unborn child turned out to be male, he—not Joan—would inherit the throne. While the realm waited for the child’s birth, Louis’s brother, Philip the Tall, ruled as regent. On November 15, 1316, a baby boy was born. He was proclaimed King John I, but died five days later. His was the shortest reign in French history, and he was the only king born a king. So…did Joan become the queen after John died? Nope—Philip the Tall muscled in and claimed the thrones of both France and Navarre (a small kingdom between Castille and Aragon in northern Spain) for himself. When Joan protested, he called her paternity into question and raised other issues that kept her from ever becoming the queen of France. But she did become the queen of Navarre in 1328, and reigned there until her death in 1349.
Closest U.S. state to Africa: Maine. Its easternmost point is 3,154 miles west of El Beddouza, Morocco.
Details: World War I was only three days old when Germany declared war against Russia on August 1, 1914. The war went badly for Russia, and after Czar Nicholas II assumed personal command of the army in 1915, much of the blame fell on him. By March 1917, the country was near collapse. Revolution broke out in the capital, and on the 15th, Nicholas abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son, Alexei.
The moment that Nicholas signed the abdication papers at 3:00 p.m., Alexei became the czar. Nicholas initially assumed that because Alexei was a minor, the boy’s uncle, Grand Duke Michael, would rule in his name until he came of age, and Nicholas would be allowed to raise his son in Russia. But after speaking with advisors, Nicholas realized that he would likely be sent into exile, without the boy czar. Making the situation more painful, Alexei suffered from hemophilia, a life-threatening and, at the time, untreatable blood disorder. Nicholas decided it would be cruel to permit his son to be raised away from his family. Shortly before midnight, he signed a second set of abdication papers, back-dated to 3:00 p.m., passing the throne to Grand Duke Michael instead.
Ruler: Czar Michael II of Russia (1878–1918)
Reign: Less than a day
Details: When Grand Duke Michael awoke on the morning of March 16, 1917, he was handed a telegram informing him that his brother, Czar Nicholas, had abdicated and that he was now the czar. Representatives of the provisional government were already on their way to meet with him; the discussions that followed lasted well into the afternoon. By the time they ended, Michael had decided to abdicate. He said he would be willing to return to the throne if a democratically elected government asked him to. But that never happened: in November the Bolshevik Party (later renamed the Communist Party) seized power and abolished the Russian monarchy. In the months that followed, Michael, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their son Alexei, their four daughters, and a dozen other members of the royal family were executed by the Bolsheviks to prevent them from ever returning to power.
UPS trucks are painted a trademarked color called Pullman Brown. It was formerly used on…