100 Interesting Facts About Dictators

Manuel Noriega, a former dictator of Panama, sued Activision for portraying him as a bad guy in the call of duty black ops series

52. General Ne Win of Myanmar changed the country from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side, due to fears the nation had moved politically too far left.

53. The plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwandan president whose assassination ignited the 1994 Genocide, was shot down near the Kigali International Airport and crashed in the backyard of the presidential residence

54. Argentinian dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas had an eight-month-pregnant woman executed by firing squad for the crime of "sacrilege"

55. Efraín Ríos Montt, former de facto President of Guatemala, became the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide by a court in their own country.

Most of the money George Clooney makes off his Nespresso commercials, he spends on a satellite that surveils over the border of North and South Sudan to keep an eye on criminal and dictator Omar al-Bashir to track his vicious army in an attempt to warn civilians before attacks occur

57. In 2001, Kim Jong Il's eldest son (Kim Jong Nam) was caught using a fake Dominican passport to enter Japan. When asked for an explanation, he said he "just wanted to visit Disneyland." He was subsequently disowned by his father.

58. North Korea's Kim Jong-Il was claimed to complete a 72 par course in 34 strokes, managing a world record five holes-in-one, making him the best golfer in the history of the world. It was also apparently the first time he has ever golfed.

59. North Korea enlists around 2000 women as part of a 'Pleasure Squad'. These are attractive women who provide entertainment and sexual services for top officials. One defector says Kim Jong-il was "sentimental when drunk, and even shed tears"

60. In 2012 a 14-year old North Korean girl named Han Hyon-Gyong drowned while trying to save portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, and the government renamed her school after her

A former dictator of Myanmar (Ne Win) thought 9 was his lucky number, so decreed that all currency denominations not divisible by 9 no longer had value, devastating the savings of much of the population.

62. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was elected with 100% of the votes. The ballot listed only him. Citizens are allowed to cross out his name and write in a new one, but they must step outside the election booth to do so, and write down the new name in front of election officials.

63. A 17-foot statue of Vladimir Lenin has been removed from a rooftop in NYC's East Village, where it stood for 20 years. The statue had been positioned to face Wall Street, the emblem of capitalism.

64. The largest stadium in the world, Rŭngnado May First Stadium, is located in Pyongyang, North Korea. In the late 90's it was used as a venue to publicly burn several army generals that were implicated in an assassination attempt on Kim Jong-Il.

65. Kim Jong-Il's personal sushi chef (Kenji Fujimoto) escaped from North Korea in 2001 by telling the supreme leader he wanted to buy a sea urchin to cook for him. He subsequently wrote a memoir about his experiences with Kim Jong-Il.

Paraguay's first dictator, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, forbade colonial citizens from marrying one another and allowed them to marry only blacks, mulattoes or natives, in order to break the power of colonial-era elites and to create a mixed-race or mestizo society.

67. Kim Jong Ils official biography listed, among his achievements, a 38 shot round of golf, ability to control the weather, he never needed to poop and was credited with inventing the hamburger.

68. Homefront, a video game released in early 2011, based on a war against a North Korean global power, has so far successfully predicted both the year of Kim Jong-Il's death (2011) and North Korea's nuclear test in 2013.

69. Kim Jong-il had his agricultural minister executed by firing squad due to the North Korean famine, and when the famine got worse he had men dig up his body and posthumously execute him by firing squad.

70. When in North Korea in 2011, graffiti saying "Park Chung Hee and Kim Jong Il are both dictators. Park Chung Hee was a dictator who developed his country’s economy, Kim Jong Il was a dictator who starved people to death” was found at a Pyongyang college, the entire city went into a 3 day lockdown

Kim Jong-il is so sensitive about his height (he's ~5'3") that he told all the short people in Pyongyang about a new drug which would make them taller and then deported them all when they showed up. His official bio claims he doesn't poop.

72. Vladimir Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent

73. Kim Jong-un's great-grandfather was a Korean independence activist and a devout Christian missionary.

74. A North Korean general named Hyon-Yong-Chol was executed with an anti-aircraft gun in front of hundreds of people, reportedly for behavior such as falling asleep in Kim Jong-un’s presence.

75. Kim Jong-Il bought an entire brewery in England, shipped it piece by piece to North Korea and got it rebuilt there.