The rebel thyroid of a revolutionary First Lady

Nadezda Krupskaya, the revolutionary Russian and Lenin's wife, was affected by Graves' disease and many photos and portraits, including the painting of 1933 by Ivan Vladimirovich Kosmin, highlight evident goiter and exoftalmos. To treat Graves' disease, Krupskaya underwent to surgery performed by Theodor Kocher, considered the father of the modern thyroid surgery.

Virtually Being Lenin Enhances Presence and Engagement in a Scene From the Russian Revolution

Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely applied to cultural heritage such as the reconstruction of ancient sites and artifacts. It has hardly been applied to the reprise of specific important moments in history. On the other hand immersive journalism does attempt to recreate current events in VR, but such applications typically give the viewer a disembodied non-participatory role in the scene of interest. Here we show how VR was used to reconstruct a specific historical event, where a famous photograph was brought to life, showing Lenin, the leader of the 1917 October Russian Revolution, giving a speech to Red Army recruits in Moscow 1920. We carried out a between groups experimental study with three conditions: Embodied-where the participant was first embodied as Lenin and then later in the audience watching Lenin; Included-where the participant was not embodied as Lenin but was embodied as part of the audience; and Observing-where the participant mainly viewed the scene from a disembodied third person point of view. Twenty participants were assigned to each of the three conditions in a between-groups design. We found that the level of presence was greatest in the Embodied and Included conditions, and that participants were least likely to later follow up information about the Russian Revolution in the Observing condition. Our conclusion is that if the VR setup allows for a period of embodiment as a character in the scenario then this should be employed in order to maximize the chance of participant presence and engagement with the story.

Vessels of Stone: Lenin's "circulatory disturbance of the brain"

Many have wondered what might have become of the totalitarian state Lenin founded on merciless terror, had he not died so young. He was 52 and at the height of his power when he had his first stroke. Six months later he had another and then a third stroke three months after that. He died 3 months shy of his 54th birthday with cerebral arteries so calcified that when tapped with tweezers at the time of his autopsy, they sounded like stone. The reason for his premature atherosclerosis has yet to be explained. He had a family history of cardiovascular disease and, therefore, is suspected of having had an inherited lipid disorder. Stress too might have had a role in the progression of his atherosclerosis. However, neither would explain the extent of the calcification of his cerebral arteries identified at post mortem examination. A recently described variant of the NT5E mutation might explain such calcification, as well as Lenin's family history of cardiovascular disease, and his premature cerebrovascular attacks.