#8 Benito Mussolini, the Writer.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician, journalist and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country from 1922 to his ousting in 1943. Before becoming the world’s first fascist dictator, Mussolini worked for a socialist paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, for which he wrote a serial later published as a novel. The Cardinal’s Mistress tells the tragic story of, you guessed it, a 17th-century cardinal and his mistress. And boy is it bad. It’s the sort of book where “terrible groan burst forth from” characters’ breasts, and characters ask one another to “cast a ray of your light into my darkened soul.”

#9 Pol Pot, the School Teacher.

Pol Pot, was a Cambodian Communist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. From 1976 to 1979, he also served as the prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea.

Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, and his rule was a dictatorship. The combined effects of executions, forced labor, malnutrition, and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population. In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died due to the policies of his three-year premiership.

Before he became a world-famous war criminal, Pol Pot was named Saloth Sar. As a young man, Sar studied carpentry and radio engineering, but proved a poor student so he became – what else? – a teacher. (And you thought your classrooms were scary.) From 1954 to 1963, Sar taught at a private school in Phnom Penh before being forced out because of ties to communism.

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