Nicolae Ceausescu
Politician
Communist Party leader and President of Romania during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He and his wife were shot to death during the Romanian Revolution by anti-communist forces.
By the time he was twenty years old, he had been arrested on numerous occasions for his communist activities.
He issued a 1966 decree that criminalized abortion in Romania; this was his attempt to reverse the problem of population decline in his native country.
With his wife Elena, he raised three children: physicist Valentin Ceaușescu, mathematician Zoia Ceaușescu, and politician Nicu Ceaușescu.
He was born in the same year as Salvadoran political leader and fellow communist Cayetano Carpio.