Yevno Azef - terrorist double agent

Yevno Azev came from a poor Jewish family in Belarus. During his early years he participated revolutionary Jewish youth associations. He moved to Germany and in 1893, he came to Police Department with suggestions to become an informant on Russian revolutionaries - students of the Polytechnic Institute in Karlsruhe, and his offer was accepted. Azef's initial salary was 50 rubles.

In 1899 he joined the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. After the arrest of Grigory Gershuni in 1903, Azef remained a central figure and headed the Fighting Organization of the Social Revolutionaries, which carried out terrorist acts. He organized more than 30 terrorist acts, including the assassinations of Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 who was the Minister of Internal Affairs and the man who initially recruited him. This gave him a lot of credit in Socialist Revolutionary Party, which in turn allowed him to give away a lot of party members to the Secret Police without being suspected of treason.

In order to avoid disclosure, he prepared part of the terrorist attacks secretly from the Police Department, making every effort to carry them out. Some of the terrorist acts got reported by him in a timely manner, so they were prevented. Thanks to this, both party members and the police considered Azef one of their own. Every time someone tried to expose him, one of the revolutionaries "proved" that a person who organized so many successful terrorist acts cannot be an agent of the secret police. Azef was also of great value to the Security Department, as he gave away all initial members of Socialist Revolutionary Party. At that time, his salary from the Security Department reached 1,000 rubles a month.

Azef was preparing an attempt on the life of Nicholas II, which was supposed to be carried out with the use of special submarine and an aircraft, which should have been constructed specifically for this daring terrorist attack. However, in 1908 Azef was exposed as a provocateur by the publicist Vladimir Burtsev, who confirmed his suspicions with the former director of the Police Department Aleksei Lopukhin. Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party sentenced Azef to death, but he was able to avoid liquidation and fled to Germany, where he lived in constant fear of being recognised and killed until his death in 1918.

References:

Baylen, Joseph O. “Yevno Azeff: The Story of a Scoundrel.” The History Teacher, vol. 6, no. 1, Society for History Education, 1972, pp. 77–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/492626.

When immune system goes rogue

Immune system is a system of the body that protects it from all foreign substances from the outside (viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc.) and controls the destruction of failed or outdated cells (for example, it is immunity that protects us from tumour formations). In order for immune cells not to destroy the cells of their own body, there is immunological tolerance.

Most healthy poisons in the world

While plants do their best to scare away those who want to eat them by producing all sorts of complex poisons and toxins, ironically, some of them are now used by humans only because of those very poisons.

Banana republic the beginning

One of the co-founders of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was Minor Cooper Keith. He built a railroad in Costa Rica and planted many banana trees along the way to feed the workers. When the government could no longer fund the project, Keith had to come up with something to pay back the huge loan he had received. He decided to start using the newly built railroad to export bananas to the United States.

Appendix - a secondary immune organ

Although appendix is no longer used by humans for digestive purposes it still contains a high concentration of lymphoid tissue. Lymphoid tissue is essential for the immune system and may help encourage the growth of some types of beneficial gut flora.

How to survive if you're slow as a sloth?

A sloth can move slowly, but movement is not his primary defense method. Camouflage is a great way to go undetected. And this is where sloths have become experts over a long period of their evolution.