In this Dad Tangent, we take a detour into the bizarre life and even weirder death of Grigori Rasputin—the mystical monk who somehow became BFFs with the Russian royal family. Was he a healer? A fraud? A hypnotist? A time-traveling rock star who got lost on the way to the 1970s?

We’ll look at how Rasputin earned the trust of Tsarina Alexandra, how he became a walking scandal, and how his enemies tried to kill him… multiple times. Seriously, it’s like a cartoon villain plan gone wrong. Poison, bullets, drowning—this guy just wouldn’t stay down.

Come for the beard, stay for the assassination attempts.