Genghis Khan, leader and ruler of the Mongol empire in the early 13th century, went down in history because he managed to unify the Mongol tribes and lead them in a series of successful wars which ensured the Mongols a good dominion in Asia.
In Il Milione Marco Polo describes his meetings with the great Khan, as well as his way of administering the empire and its finances.
Research by an international team of geneticists has proved a spectacular thing: a good chunk of the people living today are descendants of Genghis Khan, precisely 1 in 200.
Obviously we are talking above all of people from Central Asia: 16 million Asians have a trace of the DNA of the great Khan in their Y chromosome.
This is due to the fact that Genghis Khan was a mad sexual predator. It is said that, after each conquest, he took the most beautiful women of the villages and lands subject to him.
The leader of the team of geneticists (which also included Italian scientists), Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, recounts that a 13th-century Persian historian believed that the Khan already had at least 20,000 descendants between children and grandchildren at that time.

Wait, what?