Events of July 1918 

In Ekaterinburg, Russia, Bolshevik troops killed Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei. This happened between the night of July 16 and the early morning of July 17, 1918. There were fears that anti-Bolshevik groups, especially the White Army, who were fighting against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War could use the family as a gathering point. They were jailed for months.

That night, the family was told they were being moved for their own safety. They were told to wait in the basement of the Ipatiev House after being led there. Soon after, Bolshevik forces walked into the room and told them they were going to be killed. Nicholas II didn't have much time to respond before shots were fired. It was hard for the killers to get rid of the family quickly because the girls had sewed jewellery into their clothes, which blocked bullets like armour.

The family was killed, and their bodies were buried in a secret grave in the forest. To make it harder to identify the bodies, the Bolsheviks tried to change their appearance with acid. For many years, no one knew where the grave was until the remains were found in the 1990s and DNA tests proved that they belonged to the Romanov family.