Vlad the Impaler is the (Partial) Inspiration...

When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar Nicholas II in 1868, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she lived under the fear of this prophecy. It may have come true with the arrival at co ...  Show more

Everyone knows the American Revolution was won at Yorktown in 1781, when Cornwallis’s Army was trapped, but almost no one knows that victory depended on a Spanish intelligence operative who raised 500,000 pieces of silver in Havana in just 24 hours, convincing Cuban residents to ...  Show more

Vlad Tepes, a 15th-century Wallachian prince, was the notoriously blood-thirsty basis for Dracula, Bram Stoker's classic gothic horror character. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about Vlad Tepes.

Vlad the Impaler - Vlad Dracula - is one of history’s most brutal figures, who has enjoyed a bizarre afterlife as a cult character. Although a hero to his Romanian countrymen, the name Dracula has since become a global byword for horror.

In this Hallowe’en edition of ...

Medieval politics, full of assassinations and betrayal, was not for the faint of heart. But even within that landscape, one man stands out for his cruelty: Vlad the Impaler, prince of Wallachia, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. This episode examines the real pe ...

Robert sits down with Jack O'Brien to talk about how the life of a Transylvanian prince turned into the story of Dracula.

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