Catherine the Great

Fact-check note: The horse story is a misogynistic myth; Catherine died after a stroke. She wrote, rather than merely commissioned, the Nakaz or Instruction, but it never became a new legal code. Its Enlightenment language also sat uneasily beside her expansion of serfdom and suppression of revolt, so “equality before the law” should not be read as an achieved reform. Dates use the modern Gregorian calendar; contemporary Russian dates were 11 days earlier. TIME historical review · Britannica biography