10 Female Assassins and their Intended Victims

Female assassins are rare, but there are more than you realize. They tend to fade from the history books because most of them were not successful in killing their targets. But the stories are fascinating. Take the case of Khioniya Guseva, who tried to kill Grigori Rasputin in a very public manner.

Said to be horribly disfigured through syphilis (she had no nose) Guseva attacked Rasputin as he was leaving Church in a town in Siberia.

She drove a knife in to his stomach, shouting that she had killed the antichrist while she did so. However, she hadn’t and he quickly tried to run away from her. She pursued him and attempted to finish the task but he managed to grab a stick and hit her in the face with it. Not very gentlemanly but he wasn’t exactly renowned for his manners.

Narrowly avoiding being killed by a mob that had gathered, Guseva managed to turn herself over the to the authorities and was committed to an asylum. Rasputin survived but was successfully assassinated two years later. It is not known when she died – and no pictures of her (with or without nose) survive.

Many of the women in this list at Kuriositas were committed to mental institutions, but some were executed, some served time, and a surprisingly number of them actually got away with no punishment. -via the Presurfer

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It's amazing what the Vogel's were able to do with a complete devotion to collecting art. They bought it from artists who were not yet famous so they were able to get many of them for under 50 dollars. They have no fancy cars, penthouse apt. or yachts which they could easily have had if they had sold their monumental collection to the highest bidder. Instead they give it away to the National Gallery because they like the idea that the gallery will not ever sell one of them and that they public will have access to it.

The whole point of their life is shared passion and selflessness in the devotion to a cause; in this case art that they felt had value. They were proven right a thousand times over.

Many people seem to think if they don't like something, it should have no value to anyone else. I would like to go through some people's record collections and point out the "bad taste" of some of their recordings. I would be wrong and the person who loves the music would be right. It has value inasmuch as it speaks to the individual's asthetic sense. One of the artists said that Herbie Vogel's sense was one in which there was no buffer between his eyes and his soul. Most people walk through life blind to anything but the easily understood. Others find value and beauty in the challenging. I hope to always be in the latter group.