It’s rare that my Facebook News Feed yields anything too out of the ordinary, but last night, a click on a friend’s link eventually led me to this NPR article on a curious pattern in Russia.
When the Communists took over in Russia in 1917, the first leader, Vladimir Lenin, was bald. His successor, Joseph Stalin, was hairy.
Stalin’s successor (we’re skipping an interim leader, Georgy Malenkov, who never got to be chairman), Nikita Khrushchev, was bald. Next up: Leonid Brezhnev (hairy). Then, in rapid succession, came Yuri Andropov (bald), Konstantin Chernenko (hairy), Mikhail Gorbachev (bald), Boris Yeltsin (hairy), Vladimir Putin (very, very thin on top) — and last and maybe least, today’s Dmitry Medvedev (hairy).
Is this evidence that we could predict the next Russian president? Unlikely. Can I now make jokes about eggheads creating hairy situations because they think they’re “infollicle”? Absolutely.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons