Stalin lived to be 65 years old and had 2 weddings
Some interesting facts about Joseph Stalin are:
- He was only 5'5" tall.
- His face was heavily scarred from childhood smallpox and had all official photos of him airbrushed so they would not show.
- He was disqualified for service in the Tsarist army in World War 1 because of a childhood injury that permanently weakened his left arm.
- His mother wanted him to be a priest so he went to the seminary. His father wanted him to be a shoemaker so he did some work with his father. His mother won, but not for long. He was kicked out of the seminary for revolutionary activities.
- He sent a wreath to his mother's funeral.
- He shaved Lenin's beard and mustache off when Lenin had to go into hiding in Finland in July 1917.
- Stalin pulled off bank robberies to help fund Bolshevik activities.
- He was suspected by other revolutionaries of being a secret agent for the Tsarist police, the Okhrana, because he kept getting off pretty lightly when he was arrested now and then.
- His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili
- At the age of seven, he contracted smallpox, which permanently scarred his face
- Stalin's first child, Yakov, died of typhus in 1907
- Stalin was conscripted by the Russian army to fight in World War I, but was deemed unfit for service because of his damaged left arm
- At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary