Catherine the Great did not die from being crushed by a horse, despite the incredibly persistent and vicious historical rumor that has ruined her legacy for centuries.

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Catherine the Great did not die from being crushed by a horse, despite the incredibly persistent and vicious historical rumor that has ruined her legacy for centuries. The legendary empress of Russia actually died from a completely normal stroke while sitting in her bathroom, but her political enemies hated her so much that they invented a wildly scandalous story to humiliate her in death. Because she was a powerful, sexually liberated woman who took numerous younger lovers, aristocratic French gossips decided to spread a malicious lie that she was crushed to death by a complex mechanical harness while trying to copulate with a stallion. This absurd piece of eighteenth-century fake news became so popular that it completely overshadowed her massive achievements in modernizing the Russian empire, proving that society has always been terrified of powerful women and will literally invent beastiality rumors to tear them down