September 12, 2012
Charles XII autopsy right side
***
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
Blogs
 A history of the future that never was |
 History with all the interesting bits left in |
Obvious suicide.
Uh no.. not suicide. That was the result of a battle. Learn some dang history!
Not a battle, exactly, but a murder that took place during a war. The person who fired the fatal shot has never been identified with certainty. BTW, that is a common trajectory for a suicidal gunshot wound. Goes to show that you can’t necessarily determine the manner, as opposed to the cause, of death without knowing the circumstances. (Manner of death = suicide, homicide, accident, or natural causes; cause of death = specific agent e.g. exanguination due to stabbing, respiratory failure due to pneumonia, etc.)
Methinks irony maybe lost upon some…
It’s so tell-tale that this is the result of an alien brain probe gone awry–Jeez, how oblivious can you guys be???
Suicide didn’t work as a right hander, why would he shoot himself with the left?
Charles XII, King of Sweden, was a contemporary of Peter the Great and fought against Peter several times. He always led his forces into battle and always came out unscathed. On one occasion, he drove so deeply into Russia that, when the Russians drove him out, they drove him into the Ottoman Empire. He and his army stayed there for a couple of years.
After returning to Sweden, Charles had to deal with a rebellion by Norway, which was controlled by Sweden. Charles was surveying Norwegian fortifications at night from the Swedish fortifications when a Norwegian sniper spotted him and picked him off.