The body of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will rest in a glass case on public display forever.
That’s according to his deputy, Nicolas Maduro.
While the idea may seem alien to some, Chavez will be the latest in a line of leaders whose remains have been embalmed and put on show in a glass casket.
Perhaps the best known is Russia’s Vladimir Lenin, whose body still lies in a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square, nearly 90 years after his death.
Others include Stalin, China’s Mao Zedong, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, and North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung.
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was also embalmed following his assassination in 1865, enabling his body to be taken on its winding, three-week train journey back to Springfield, Illinois, with open-casket memorial services along the way.
