Born today, August 8, 1849: Vera Ivanovna Zasulich. At the age of 29, she shot the famously sadistic governor of St. Petersburg, Fyodor Trepov. Although he survived, Trepov was so universally despised that a jury found Zasulich not guilty. She then escaped Russia to Switzerland and became a founding member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and a contributing editor to the Party’s newspaper, Iskra (“Spark”) in 1900.

Leon Trotsky, who had himself escaped a sentence of exile in Siberia in 1902, to immediately join the Iskra team, has said of Zasulich: “It was not just her heroic past that had placed Vera Ivanovna in the front ranks. No, it was her penetrating mind, her extensive education, primarily in history, and a rare psychological insight.” She died of pneumonia, back in St Petersburg, in 1919.