The body of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will rest in a
glass case on public display. Forever. At least, so said 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. For Nina
Tumarkin, author of "Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet
Russia," the decision to embalm Lenin in 1924 -- the first
modern leader to have his corpse preserved in this way -- was a
reflection of a tumultuous period in