a family affair

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, reports that this day—among many other things—the proclamation in 1917 from King George V to change the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in order to distance the royal family from a rather serious internecine spat amongst the extended family.
Also on this day in the following year, George’s cousin Nicholas and his family were assassinated by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yerkaterinburg, the Romanovs having been deposed during the October Revolution and sent into internal exile. This day in 1945 also marks the start of the two week Potsdam conference, convened by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman, coming together to decide on the administration of defeated Nazi Germany and post-war order.