50 assassinations that changed the world

Andrés Escobar, Colombian footballer

Date of assassination: 1994

In a match against the USA at the 1994 World Cup, an own goal scored by the Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar would ultimately cost him his life. With the goal contributing to Colombia’s defeat and elimination from the tournament, gambling syndicates took their revenge on Escobar. Back in his home city of Medellin, he was shot 12 times while sitting in his car. His killers reportedly shouted ‘Gol!’ after each shot that was fired.

Václav I, Duke of Bohemia

Date of assassination: 935

Václav I – also known as Václav the Good or, more commonly, Wenceslaus I – was a popular duke who, after his murder in 935, was elevated to sainthood. He was stabbed to death in the town of Stará Boleslav (part of the modern-day Czech Republic) by men under the instructions of his ruthlessly ambitious younger brother Boleslav, who also ran him through with a lance. Václav is remembered to this day every Christmas in song; although factually incorrect, he is Good King Wenceslas.

Peter of Verona, Veronese preacher

Date of assassination: 1252

The Veronese preacher publicly railed against Catharism (a belief that there are two gods, one good and one evil) and sought to convert many 13th-century Cathars back to Catholic orthodoxy. In 1252, he was attacked by an assassin hired by a group of conspiring Cathars. The story goes that not only was the top of Peter’s head chopped off by an axe, but he wrote 'Credo in Deum' ('believe in God') on the floor in his own blood before dying.

Nikephoros II Phokas, Byzantine emperor

Date of assassination: 969

Although he was Byzantine emperor for just six years during the tenth century, Nikephoros II Phokas was celebrated for his brilliant military mind, which helped strengthen the empire. However, in 969 he was the victim of a conspiracy led by his wife Theophano and his nephew/her lover John Tzimiskes. Nikephoros’s assassins sneaked into the palace at night dressed as women, before decapitating the Emperor in his bedroom.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founding leader of the new republic of Bangladesh

Date of assassination: 1975

Mujibur was the founding leader of the new republic of Bangladesh, after it won its independence from Pakistan in 1972 following a bloody war. In August 1975, the President – along with members of his family and his staff – were murdered in a coup instigated by a group of army officers, rumoured to have been backed by the CIA. Mujibur’s murder led to many years of counter-coups and political instability in the new nation.

James A Garfield, 20th US President

Date of assassination: 1881

Garfield was the 20th US President, but only served seven months in office before his premature demise. In July 1881, he was shot at a railroad station in Washington DC by Charles J Guiteau, a campaign worker disgruntled by what he believed to be a lack of gratitude on Garfield’s part for helping to get him elected. Despite attempts at a recovery, Garfield died from his wounds 11 weeks later, and Guiteau was hanged the following year.

Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet during World War II

Date of assassination: 1943

Yamamoto was commander-in-chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet during World War II, and thus in command at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway. This made him a prime target for the US military. Acting on President Franklin Roosevelt’s orders to “get Yamamoto”, and having intercepted vital intelligence about the Admiral’s movements, in April 1943 the US Air Force shot down Yamamoto’s plane over the Solomon Islands.

Umberto I of Italy, king of Italy

Date of assassination: 1900

King of Italy between 1878 and 1900, Umberto’s reign was deeply unpopular with anarchists and those on the country’s political left. While attending a gymnastics display in the city of Monza, his life was ended by four bullets fired by anarchist Gaetano Bresci. Bresci claimed he was avenging Umberto’s support of a massacre in Milan two years previously, when 300 people were killed while protesting about rising bread prices.

Pancho Villa, one of the most conspicuous figures behind the Mexican Revolution

Date of assassination: 1923

Villa was one of the most conspicuous figures behind the Mexican Revolution, after joining the struggle against long-serving President Porfirio Díaz in 1910. By 1920, he had made his peace with the government and was living in quiet retirement. Three years later though – and possibly as a reaction to rumours he was going to re-enter political life – he and four close associates were shot and killed while travelling home from Parral by a group of seven gunmen.

Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa

Date of assassination: 1966

Prime minister of South Africa between 1958 and 1966, Verwoerd was largely the architect of the country’s adoption of racial apartheid. Having survived an assassination attempt six years previously, in 1966 the newly re-elected prime minister was fatally stabbed in the neck and chest as he entered the House of Assembly in Cape Town. His assailant, Dimitri Tsafendas, had recently been denied official permission to co-habit with his mixed-race girlfriend.

Francisco Pizarro González, 16th-century Spanish conquistador

Date of assassination: 1541

Pizarro was the 16th-century Spanish conquistador most famous for conquering the Inca Empire and killing its leader Atahualpa. In 1541, by which time he was the ageing Governor of Peru, he was set upon by supporters of his chief political opponent, Diego de Almagro. Suffering from multiple stab wounds, Navarro reportedly drew a cross on the palace floor in his own blood before promptly expiring.

Empress Myeongseong, ‘Queen Min’, wife of Gojong of Korea

Date of assassination: 1895

‘Queen Min’, wife of Gojong of Korea, the man who would become the Korean Empire’s first emperor, was murdered in 1895 by forces loyal to pro-Japanese factions within Korea. She was 43. Min had been vocal in her fears of Japanese expansion and favoured stronger union with Russia. Her assassination – followed by her body being burnt in a nearby forest – caused international consternation and ultimately led to the founding of the empire.

Medgar Evers, civil rights activist

Date of assassination: 1963

On the morning of 12 June 1963, civil rights activist Evers was shot on the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Initially denied entry to the local hospital’s emergency department, he died within the hour. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.

Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council, was charged with his murder but all-white juries failed to reach a verdict in two trials (De La Beckwith was subsequently found guilty in 1994). “You can kill a man,” Evers had said rather prophetically, “but you can’t kill
an idea.”

Umar, one of the most significant Muslim caliphs

Date of assassination: 644

Umar – also known as Omar – was one of the most significant Muslim caliphs ever, whose rule gave rise to the conquest of Persia in 644. That conquest made him a target of Persians; a plan was hatched for his assassination later that year when he undertook a hajj to Mecca, the great crowds offering cover to his would-be assassins.

While leading morning prayers, he was attacked by a Persian slave called Pīrūz Nahāvandi who stabbed him multiple times in the belly. Hoping to disappear into the mosque’s congregation, Pīrūz was instead surrounded and set upon. He attacked and killed several more Muslims, before eventually turning his blade on himself.

Ramesses III, Egyptian pharaoh

Date of assassination: 1155 BC

The death of the last great pharaoh created one of the oldest murder-mysteries. After a long reign pockmarked by internal strife and aggression towards Egypt, he met his demise in 1155 BC. It was only when trial transcripts were subsequently discovered that a plot against Ramesses – instigated by one of his wives whose son would inherit the throne – was revealed.

• Read more | Timeline: the pharaohs and dynasties that ruled ancient Egypt

Only in recent years has the method of murder been settled, too. With his mummified body showing no obvious wounds, in 2011 a team of Egyptologists made a CT scan of his heavily bandaged neck. The bandages were concealing a deep knife wound; his throat has been slashed.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I

Date of assassination: 1898

Elisabeth was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I who, in 1898, had travelled to Geneva incognito. She was about to board a steamship to Montreux with her lady-in-waiting when she was fatally stabbed by an assailant using a homemade weapon. At first, she thought it to be a simple robbery, but after boarding the ship, she collapsed and died.

Her killer was an Italian anarchist called Luigi Lucheni, who had arrived in Switzerland determined to attack the first member of royalty he chanced upon. “I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign,” he later confessed. “It was not a woman I struck, but an empress. It was a crown that I had in view.”

Queen Jezebel, wife of Ahab, the ninth-century-BC king of Israel

Date of assassination: 9th century BC

Jezebel was the wife of Ahab, the ninth-century-BC king of Israel, and is generally portrayed as a scheming and divisive figure. After Ahab’s death, two of her sons reigned in turn, allowing her to maintain her power. When the younger brother, Joram, was killed by a pretender to the throne called Jeru, Jezebel knew her time was up.

With Jeru on his way to kill her, she dressed herself in her best clothes and make-up. She may have been intending to seduce Jeru and become his mistress, or she may have simply been preparing for a dignified death. Either way, Jezebel’s demise was brutal. Jeru ordered her servants to throw her from a high window, leaving her body in the street below where it was trampled by galloping horses and eaten by stray dogs.

Ngo Dinh Diem, anti-Communist president of South Vietnam

Date of assassination: 1963

The autocratic, savagely anti-Communist president of South Vietnam from 1955 until his death eight years later, Diem and his politically powerful brother were executed in the back of an armoured personnel carrier by a high-ranking officer following a military coup in early November 1963.

The coup, which had the knowledge if not the involvement of the US government, destabilised South Vietnam and, with Lyndon B Johnson in the White House just a few weeks later after JFK’s own assassination, the conflict with the Communist North went into a deeper, more profound phase.

Alexander Litvinenko, former officer of the KGB

Date of assassination: 2006

A former officer of the KGB, Litvinenko sought and received political asylum in London, from where he wrote books that revealed the inner workings of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In October 2006, he publicly pinned the Moscow murder of the journalist (and Kremlin critic) Anna Politkovskaya on the regime; the following month, he suddenly fell ill after meeting two former KGB operatives for a meal the previous day. Tests revealed that he had been poisoned with polonium-210. Litvinenko died three weeks later, but not before dictating his deathbed speech, in which he directly placed the blame for his poisoning at Putin’s door.

Harvey Milk, first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US

Date of assassination: 1978

In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US when he became city supervisor for San Francisco. Little more than 12 months later, he was dead, shot several times while at work at City Hall. His boss, Mayor George Moscone, had also been fatally shot.

Their killer was Dan White, a former city supervisor who was not only trying to regain his job, but was also incensed by the authorities’ increasing liberalisation, including Moscone’s pro-gay sympathies. Since his murder, Milk has become a totemic figure, aided by the film Milk, in which he was played by Sean Penn.

• On the podcast | LGBTQ history podcast episodes

Pontiac, Native American who, in leading resistance to British rule in the Great Lakes region

Date of assassination: 1769

Pontiac was a Native American who, in leading resistance to British rule in the Great Lakes region of North America, had a war named after him – the imaginatively titled Pontiac’s War. His subsequent friendly relations with the British didn’t impress other tribal leaders and, in April 1769, Pontiac was murdered in a village in modern-day Illinois.

His killer was an unnamed warrior from the Peoria tribe whose apparent motive was to avenge the stabbing of his chief (also his uncle) by Pontiac three years previously. The Peoria council had approved the assassination; there were also rumours that the British had hired his killer.

Reinhard Heydrich, described by Adolf Hitler as “the man with the iron heart”

Date of assassination: 1942

Described by Adolf Hitler as “the man with the iron heart”, Heydrich occupies an infamous chapter in history for his unfailing devotion to policies of mass genocide towards Jews. He died as a result of injuries following an attack on him in May 1942 by two Czech paratroopers who had been trained by the British Special Operations Executive.

Travelling to Berlin in an open-topped Mercedes-Benz, Heydrich was attacked by the pair as the car slowed down to negotiate a hairpin bend in a Prague suburb. Subjected to machine-gun fire and a hand-thrown bomb, he died of his injuries seven days later. After the assassins were falsely linked to the village of Lidice, it was razed to the ground.

Rajiv Gandhi, former prime minister of India

Date of assassination: 1991

Gandhi became prime minister of India on 31 October 1984, succeeding his mother Indira who had been assassinated by two of her bodyguards that morning. His five-year rule was decidedly turbulent, a term of office during which – rather significantly – he had antagonised the militant Tamil Tigers organisation by sending peacekeeping forces into Sri Lanka. In May 1991, he died at the hands of the Tigers when a suicide bomber killed him and around 16 others.

Pompey the Great, Roman statesman

Date of assassination: 48 BC

After the First Triumvirate – the three-man alliance ruling Rome from 60 BC – collapsed, civil war broke out, pitching Pompey against his former ally Caesar. Defeats in Greece caused Pompey to flee to Egypt where he thought he could call upon the support of King Ptolemy. Instead, Ptolemy’s advisors – looking to find favour with Caesar – ordered his assassination. As Pompey stepped onto Egyptian soil, Lucius Septimius’s sword brought about his premature demise.

Alexander II, Russian Tsar

Date of assassination: 1881

In March 1881, the Tsar – who had ruled Russia for 26 years – was killed by a bomb deployed by a member of a terrorist organisation called the People’s Will. Alexander’s early reign was noteworthy for the way he sought to liberalise and modernise imperial Russia, including great investment in the railway network and the eradication of serfdom.

However, he wasn’t so keen on political reform and suppressed popular protest over tsarist rule. Several attempts on his life were made – including derailing his train and blowing up the Winter Palace – before he finally met his fate that March day
in St Petersburg.

Robert Kennedy, US democrat

Date of assassination: 1968

Less than five years after the brutal killing of his brother John, Robert Kennedy also fell to the assassin’s bullet. In June 1968, Kennedy was campaigning for his own tilt at the US presidency. Having just won the Democratic primary in California, Kennedy addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Leaving the premises via the kitchens, Kennedy was approached by a Palestinian called Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who opened fire from a .22-calibre revolver. Sirhan later revealed that the attack stemmed from the betrayal he’d felt by Kennedy supporting Israel in the Six-Day War, the first anniversary of which fell on the day of the assassination.

James I of Scotland

Date of assassination: 1437

Imprisoned as a child by the English for nearly two decades, James eventually took the Scottish throne at the age of 30, despite his father, Robert III, having died soon after his initial incarceration. The legitimacy of James’s reign became an increasingly thorny issue. His grandfather had ‘married’ twice, but the legality of the first marriage, from which James was descended, was under scrutiny.

In 1437, around 30 supporters of those descended from the second marriage committed regicide at Blackfriars Monastery in Perth. James hid in the sewers but there was no escape; he had recently had the sewers blocked off in order not to lose tennis balls. It is believed that his embalmed heart was later taken to the Holy Land on pilgrimage.

Lee Harvey Oswald, main suspect behind JFK's assassination

Date of assassination: 1963

On 24 November 1963, two days after the most shocking assassination in US history – that of President John F Kennedy – the main suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was being led through the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters when nightclub owner Jack Ruby stepped forward and fired a pistol into his stomach.

Ruby later explained that he shot Oswald to save Kennedy’s widow Jackie “the discomfiture of coming back to trial”. Conspiracy theorists see it differently; that Oswald was executed to silence him about the involvement of organised crime in the killing of the President.

• Read more | Who was behind JFK’s assassination? The real history that challenges the conspiracy

Agrippina the Younger, one of the most powerful women of the Roman era

Date of assassination: AD 59

Agrippina was one of the most powerful women of the Roman era. She was the sister of Caligula, became the fourth wife of Claudius and was the mother of Nero. The Empress was widely believed to have ordered the fatal poisoning of her husband so that Nero, and not Claudius’s own son Britannicus, would become emperor.

Ultimately, though, it was Nero who himself instructed his mother’s demise. She pre-empted poisoning attempts by taking antidotes, and once had to swim to shore after a pleasure-boat ‘accident’. Ultimately, she was killed in her bedroom by three assailants, clubbed and stabbed to death.

Spencer Perceval, only British prime minister to be assassinated while in office

Date of assassination: 1812

Perceval remains the only British prime minister to be assassinated while in office. On the afternoon of 11 May 1812, Perceval was late for a parliamentary session at the House of Commons.

On entering the lobby, he was confronted by John Bellingham, a merchant from Liverpool, who discharged a pistol into the Prime Minister’s chest. Bellingham’s grievance stemmed from an extended time in a Russian jail, an injustice he felt the British government had done little to correct. In the melee, Bellingham could easily have escaped, but instead sat quietly until his arrest.

Malcolm X, one of the most influential figures of the black separatist group Nation Of Islam

Date of assassination: 1965

As one of the most influential figures of the black separatist group Nation Of Islam, Malcolm X was no stranger to making headlines with his public pronouncements. As such, he arguably had a higher profile than the organisation’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. In 1964, he split from the Nation, citing its rigidity on policy.

He set up the rival Organization of Afro-American Unity which, unlike the Nation, advocated African-Americans to engage in the electoral process. The conflict between Malcolm and his former comrades intensified and, on 21 February 1965, he was gunned down by Nation members while addressing an audience of 400.

Osama Bin Laden, founder and chief of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda

Date of assassination: 2011

After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, the founder and chief of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda became the most wanted man on the planet. Osama Bin Laden stayed at large for some time; it took the US government nearly ten years to track him down.

He was finally traced to a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan where, in May 2011, US Navy Seals assassinated him in a CIA-led mission. Four others were killed in the night-time raid that was reportedly made without the knowledge of the Pakistani government. The US forces removed Bin Laden’s body and afforded him a burial at sea within 48 hours, in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Leon Trotsky, key figure in the 1917 Russian Revolution

Date of assassination: 1940

Trotsky was a key figure in the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequently played a substantial role in the Communists’ consolidation of power in the following few years. To all intents and purposes, he was the heir-apparent to Vladimir Lenin, head of the government of the Soviet Union.

However, on Lenin’s death in 1924, Trotsky was outsmarted by Joseph Stalin and, as a fierce critic of the new premier, ejected from the Communist Party three years later. In exile in Mexico, he continued to criticise Stalin’s government and, in 1940, was on the receiving end of an ice-pick to the head. His killer – a Spanish-born Soviet agent by the name of Ramón Mercader – was declared Hero of the Soviet Union upon his release from prison in 1961.

Caligula, Roman emperor

Date of assassination: AD 41

The Roman reign of Caligula – aka Emperor Gaius Caesar – was short and not particularly sweet. Having succeeded the deeply unpopular Tiberius in AD 37, the initial phases of Caligula’s rule appeared promising. He abolished one particularly unwelcome tax, and freed prisoners who he felt had been treated unfairly under the previous regime.

But after a near-death bout of illness, his character underwent a dramatic transformation, turning this emperor into – in the words of Mary Beard - “the most sadistic, depraved and tyrannical of all”. The people didn’t stand for it for long. Less than four years after taking charge, Caligula was dead, stabbed more than 30 times by a group of guardsmen after a sporting event.

Indira Gandhi, daughter of India’s first prime minister

Date of assassination: 1984

The daughter of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi occupied the same job as her father during two periods – between 1966-1977 and from 1980 until her death in 1984. Her assassination was the result of her reaction to separatist impulses during her fourth term of office, in particular those of militant Sikhs in Punjab.

In June 1984, Gandhi instructed the Indian army to reclaim control of the Sikh-occupied Golden Temple in Amritsar. Hundreds were killed in the operation. Four months later, Gandhi was shot dead in the garden of the Prime Minister’s residence. Her killers were two of her bodyguards, both Sikhs, taking revenge for the massacre at Golden Temple. In her last speech, made the day before she died, Gandhi had issued these prophetic words: “I am alive today, I may not be there tomorrow… When I die, I can say that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.”

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

Date of assassination: 1865

The 16th President of the United States was also the first to be assassinated. On 14 April 1865, in the dying embers of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater in Washington DC while watching a performance of the play Our American Cousin. His killer was John Wilkes Booth, a man who combined a career as an actor with spying for the Confederates.

Initially, Wilkes Booth’s plan was merely to kidnap the President, but after a speech by Lincoln that signalled his intention to offer African-Americans the vote, he altered his plans – and history. He took his chance during the second half of the performance, sneaking up to the balcony after Lincoln’s bodyguard had left his post to have a drink in a bar across the street. The President was shot in the head at point-blank range and Wilkes Booth escaped, going on the run for 12 days before being killed.

Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president

Date of assassination: 1981

In 1978, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their negotiations that led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty the following year. But the treaty wasn’t welcomed by all. Many Arab nations were grossly unhappy about the accord, an agreement that also focused a huge amount of anger and resentment in Anwar's direction back in Egypt.

After a sustained period of riots, the President arrested and suppressed opposition figures. On 6 October 1981, during a commemorative army parade, one of the trucks stopped before the saluting Sadat who, despite deep layers of security, was attacked with hand grenades and AK-47 gunfire. Ten others were killed by the gunmen and a further 28 injured.

Henry IV of France

Date of assassination: 1610

Even the good can fall victim to the hand of an assassin. And Henry IV of France – known as ‘Good King Henry’ – was no stranger to an assassination attempt. For a monarch so popular with his people, Henry attracted his enemies, mainly due to his religious tolerance. Having switched religions himself on several occasions, his pragmatism drew no praise from the more hard-line quarters on both the Catholic and Protestant sides.

Indeed, it was a fervent Catholic who took the King’s life. François Ravaillac stabbed Henry when the royal carriage hit a traffic jam in central Paris, blocked in by a wine cart on one side and a hay cart on the other. Ravaillac said he was operating alone; the convenience of the traffic jam suggests otherwise.

Benazir Bhutto, two-time Pakistan prime minister

Date of assassination: 2007

The two-time Pakistan prime minister had been living in self-imposed exile for eight years before she returned to her home country in October 2007 ahead of elections the following year. There was an attempt on her life almost as soon as she left Karachi Airport; two suicide bombs killed 139 people, but Bhutto, the leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, escaped unharmed. Little more than two months later, on 27 December, she was dead.

Having addressed supporters at a rally in Rawalpindi, she was standing in an open-top four-by-four vehicle when she was struck by gunfire. A suicide bomb exploded moments later. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, with a spokesmen stating: “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat the mujahideen”. Others believed forces within Pakistan intelligence to have committed the assassination. Indeed, just a few weeks before that fateful day, Bhutto had confided that she believed three senior allies of President Pervez Musharraf were plotting to have her murdered.

Giuliano de’ Medici, one of the Medici brothers

Date of assassination: 1478

The Medici family was a political dynasty and banking institution in Florence who effectively ruled the city for the best part of 300 years from the 15th to 18th centuries. To get a sense of their influence and authority, Florence was the banking capital of Europe at that time and the Medici Bank was the most prominent bank in Florence. And in addition to its political and financial power, the family also produced four popes.

Being so prominent attracted enemies and in 1478, a union between two other rival banking families – the Pazzi and the Salviati clans – sought to diminish, possibly even eradicate the Medici power base. The targets were the Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano, who were attacked at Mass on Easter Sunday 1478. Lorenzo, the most powerful man in Florence, survived, but Giuliano was killed, stabbed 19 times. The attempted coup – which had the knowledge, if not the approval, of Pope Sixtus IV – failed and the Medici dynasty continued to prosper in Florence.

Attila the Hun, former king of the Huns

Date of assassination: c453

There are many different interpretations of the quick and unexpected death of arguably the most infamous and feared barbarian ruler of them all. In AD 453, on the night of his wedding to his young bride Ildico, at some point Attila died. How he died is a mystery that may never be solved. Some theories tie it to the generous levels of refreshment taken in celebration that evening – that he’d either choked to death without regaining consciousness after suffering a massive nosebleed or that he’d caused himself fatal internal bleeding following some seriously excessive drinking.

The Roman historian Marcellinus Comes offered an alternative explanation, that Attila – the fearsome conqueror of millions of people – had been “pierced by the hand and blade of his wife”. Such an explanation obviously favoured the Romans as a smokescreen, especially as another school of thought placed the blame on the Roman Empire itself. Often humiliated by Attila, the Romans may well have conspired with two of Attila’s inner circle in order to get their revenge on him. Those two men – Edecon and Orestes – certainly had enough reason to kill him themselves; Attila had reportedly killed their previous leader, his own brother Bleda. As another Roman historian, Jordanes, observed, the Hun’s demise was the result of “the balance of justice”.

Rasputin, Russian mystic

Date of assassination: c1916

Grigori Rasputin was a resilient type. Whether viewed as mystic or charlatan, his influence on Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family was undeniable, leading a cadre of suspicious noblemen to plot against the man later referred to as the ‘Mad Monk’. He was, after all, a peasant supposedly in possession of the power to heal. And there was no better way to clip Rasputin’s wings and diminish his influence than by simply assassinating him. But this was sooner said than done.

In 1914, Rasputin was stabbed in the belly by a woman with strong ties to another monk called Iliodor, who was distrustful – and possibly envious – of Rasputin’s proximity to the imperial family. He survived this attempt on his life, but more were to come. In December 1916, Rasputin was invited to a gathering at the Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg, unaware that a conspiracy was afoot. There he was served patisserie laced with cyanide, but that failed to do the job. A bullet was more reliable but, despite being shot at from the closest of quarters, Rasputin was still alive. It took two more shootings that night to finally kill him, whereupon his body was dumped in the Malaya Nevka River.

Philip II of Macedon, king of Macedon

Date of assassination: 336 BC

During his reign over the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon between 359 BC and 336 BC.

Philip II proved himself a masterful military tactician, significantly expanding Macedonian territory and power. But, at the age of 46, his rule was suddenly cut short when he attended a celebration for the marriage of his daughter. On arrival at a theatre in the capital Aegae, one of his bodyguards – Pausanias – turned on him and ended his life. His assassin tried to flee but was caught and killed.

The motive for the assassination remains unclear. Pausanias had been a lover of Philip’s, but had been cast aside when a younger man entered the fray, so jealousy may well have simply been the reason. More cynical types suggest a role in the murder for Philip’s son Alexander who – possibly in collaboration with his mother Olympias, who reportedly later placed a crown on the assassin’s coffin – may have been concerned for his prospects of succeeding his father.

Philip’s assassination was significant for what was to come after his death. Building on the foundations laid by his father, Alexander did indeed succeed him and became known as Alexander the Great, the man who united Ancient Greece.

Thomas Becket, Henry II's chancellor

Date of assassination: 1170

For many years, even before he was king, Henry II was friends with merchant’s son Thomas Becket; the pair were hunting partners and chess opponents. When Henry inherited the crown in 1154, Becket was the obvious choice for chancellor, and together they embarked on a campaign to have English common law applied across the land. In 1161, the Archbishop of Canterbury died, a vacancy Henry filled with Becket’s appointment. Many saw this as a shrewd move – bringing the Church under the control of a closer-than-close ally.

• Read more | Q&A: What happened to the assassins who killed Thomas Becket?

However, once in the post, the pair began to clash, with Becket believing that the Church operated above the common law he and Henry had worked so tirelessly to lay down. Over the Christmas period of 1170, after the outspoken Becket had spent time in exile, he made incendiary comments from the altar at Canterbury. On hearing about the sermon, Henry muttered “Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?”, whereupon four knights, believing themselves to have been commissioned to kill the ‘traitorous’ Archbishop, took to their horses. In the peace and quiet of Canterbury Cathedral, the knights struck down and butchered Becket. Accounts report that his skull was smashed on the cathedral’s unforgiving stone floor.

Henry was distraught when he realised how his misunderstood words had led to the assassination of his once-great friend. Accordingly, Becket was later hailed as a martyr and canonised.

Martin Luther King, US civil rights leader

Date of assassination: 1968

On 3 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, the US civil rights leader Martin Luther King made one of his most famous speeches, one that articulated his iron-clad commitment to the cause, no matter the personal ramifications. “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you… I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.” The following evening, on the balcony of the city’s Lorraine Motel, he was shot by the single bullet of a sniper. He was rushed to hospital but never regained consciousness. He was 39. With his passing, the hopes of a peaceful passage towards equal rights for African-Americans also died.

• Read more | Is Martin Luther King's ‘I have a dream’ the greatest speech in history?

The sniper had been seen fleeing a boarding house across the street and police found a rifle and binoculars dumped close to the scene. Upon them were the fingerprints of James Earl Ray, a fugitive who had absconded from Missouri State Penitentiary the previous year. A global manhunt saw him arrested at Heathrow Airport two months later. Sentenced to 99 years in jail, Ray believed that George Wallace, the segregationist Governor of Alabama, would be elected president later that year and that he would be released from prison accordingly.

King’s assassination saw a division in the civil rights movement which, at that point, had been coalescing effectively under his control. While some called for the policy on non-violence to be maintained, more militant factions saw his death as the point at which an armed struggle had to be taken up.

John Lennon, member of the Beatles

Date of assassination: 1980

The killing of John Lennon, in New York City on 8 December 1980, shocked the planet. It had been just another typical day for the Beatle – if there were such a thing for an ex-member of the world’s biggest-ever band. Earlier, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono had undertaken a photoshoot for Rolling Stone magazine, been interviewed for a San Francisco radio station, and spent a few hours at a recording studio. As he had left his home – in the Dakota Building on Manhattan’s West Side – for the recording studio that afternoon, Lennon signed a few autographs for fans out on the sidewalk. One autograph hunter was a security guard from Honolulu called Mark David Chapman.

When Lennon and Ono returned home at 10.50pm, Chapman was there again. This time, he was brandishing a gun. After Lennon walked passed him, Chapman fired five shots, four of which entered Lennon’s back and shoulder. While staff at the Dakota Building urgently tended to Lennon, Chapman – by now unarmed – calmly sat down, reading The Catcher In The Rye while waiting for the police to arrive. Rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police squad car, Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival in the emergency room, having lost 80 per cent of his blood. One of the attending doctors later noted that “if he had been shot this way in the middle of the operating room with a whole team of surgeons ready to work on him, he still wouldn’t have survived his injuries”.

Chapman’s motive appeared to be linked to an obsession with The Catcher In The Rye’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, a character who railed against ‘phonies’. “[Lennon] told us to imagine no possessions,” Chapman later explained, “and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms.”

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian independence activist and leader

Date of assassination: 1948

“If I am to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.” Mahatma Gandhi spoke these words just two days before his assassination on 30 January 1948. He was certainly aware of the danger his life was in. Little more than a week earlier, a bomb attack by a seven-strong band of conspirators had failed to reach its target. Prior to that, there had been other attempts on his life.

In 1934, another bomb was thrown at the car Gandhi and his wife were travelling in, but there were no fatalities. In 1944, a Hindu nationalist armed with a dagger ran at him during evening prayers but was overpowered before he reached the Mahatma. That Hindu nationalist was not only involved in the bomb attack four years later but was also the man who did ultimately end Gandhi’s life. His name was Nathuram Godse. It was a repeat of the attempt the previous week, also during an evening prayer meeting at the Birla House in New Delhi. Gandhi was shot three times in the chest and died two hours later. Godse’s reasons for killing the world’s most famous pacifist were connected to the partitioning of India and Pakistan, that he felt Gandhi showed “a bias for Muslims [that was] prejudicial and detrimental to the Hindu Community and its interests”.

Julius Caesar, former Roman dictator

Date of assassination: 44 BC

Thanks in large part to William Shakespeare’s play, the political context behind Julius Caesar’s assassination – and the calculated savagery with which the deed itself was done – is familiar to many. Originally one-third of the First Triumvirate governing Rome during the Late Roman Republic from 59 BC, over time Caesar split with fellow alliance member Pompey and the Republic was plunged into a civil war that ultimately left Caesar victorious.

By January of 44 BC, the Roman Senate had declared Caesar dictator perpetuo – effectively, dictator until his death. However, many senators were gravely concerned that this would empower Caesar to dissemble the Senate and instigate a tyrannical rule. The only way to protect the Senate’s authority was to eliminate Caesar – and within two months, the dictator was indeed dead.

The conspiring senators were wise not to court suspicion by meeting en masse. Instead, a series of smaller gatherings, often held at each others’ houses, would discuss the ideal scenario in which to rid Rome of Caesar – during a festival of gladiatorial sport held at the Theatre of Pompey. That day, 15 March 44 BC, Caesar didn’t heed the warnings of those around him. His wife, Calpurnia, troubled by nightmares about her husband’s demise, continually raised her concerns, too.

But the anxious Caesar was reassured that particular fateful morning by his good friend Brutus – who was actually one of the conspirators. The Greek historian Nicolaus of Damascus chronicles Brutus saying: “What is this, Caesar? Are you a man to pay attention to a woman's dreams and the idle gossip of stupid men, and to insult the Senate by not going out, although it has honoured you and has been specially summoned by you?”

And so Caesar made his way to his fate. On arrival, he was greeted by Lucius Tillius Cimber, who presented a petition on behalf of his exiled brother. The other conspirators crowded around, pretending to take an interest, before the first dagger penetrated Caesar’s skin. Other daggers emerged from senatorial togas; Caesar was stabbed 23 times, with reports suggesting up to 60 men had been involved.

John F Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

Date of assassination: 1963

The assassination of JFK, on 22 November 1963, was a killing that rocked the world and spread fear for the safety of the West following the President’s successful face-off against the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the previous year.

It started out as just another day in a presidential life. Kennedy and his wife Jackie had travelled to Dallas that morning in order to help iron out difficulties that the Texas governor John Connally was having with local Democrats. As the presidential motorcade weaved its way from the airfield and through downtown, crowds in their tens of thousands took to the streets to cheer the President. Governor Connally and his wife were travelling with the first couple and Mrs Connally noted to JFK: “Mr President, you can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.” “That is very obvious,” he replied. They proved to be Kennedy’s last words.

As his open-top limousine passed the Dallas Book Depository on Dealey Plaza, shots rang out and the President slumped in his seat. The head wounds he had suffered were horrific and quite clearly fatal. While Jackie Kennedy cradled her dying husband, and a Secret Service man climbed onto the limo, the car sped off to the nearest hospital. Having been shot at 12.30pm, Kennedy was pronounced dead in the emergency room of Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1pm. Thirty-eight minutes later, the visibly shell-shocked CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite informed the nation of the grave news. Exactly an hour after that, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was being signed in as president aboard Air Force One.

That afternoon, Dallas Police made a swift breakthrough in capturing the assassin when they apprehended Texas School Book Depository employee Lee Harvey Oswald in a cinema across town. Denying his involvement, Oswald never got to testify on the stand; two days later, he himself was shot and killed by local businessman Jack Ruby. Although the official Warren Commission report into Kennedy’s assassination confirmed the lone gunman theory, speculation has abounded ever since that there was a CIA-led conspiracy against the President. The most compelling case for this was made by the New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in his book On The Trail Of The Assassins.

Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Date of assassination: 1914

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, wasn’t exactly unaware of the dangers that awaited him and his wife when they ventured to Bosnia-Herzegovina in June 1914. “Our journey starts with an extremely promising omen,” he sarcastically remarked when their vehicle broke down. “Here our car burns, and down there they will throw bombs at us.” An overheating automobile was the least of his problems. For Franz Ferdinand was en route to a region that was a potential powder-keg, one where the actions of a teenager would have a seismic effect on the delicate peace of the entire planet.

Franz Ferdinand was travelling to Bosnia-Herzegovina to witness military exercises, following the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s annexing of the provinces which, incidentally, he had opposed. Forty per cent of the local population was Serbian, an ethnic group that the Archduke had been far from complimentary about in the past; ‘pigs’ and ‘scoundrels’ were among his descriptions. So his visit to Sarajevo naturally prompted great interest among the more radical elements in and around the city.

Wrong turn

A group of these radicals – Young Bosnia – plotted to assassinate the heir. In this, they were aided by the route of the Archduke on his final day being made public. With the assistance of the terrorist Black Hand group, these young students had procured bombs and pistols and, on 28 June, they put their plan into action.

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The plan didn’t go like clockwork. As the motorcade moved along the Appel Quay, a prominent Sarajevo boulevard, one of the terrorists – Nedeljko Čabrinović – hurled a bomb at the Archduke’s car. Unfortunately for him, it bounced off the soft-top roof and slid underneath another vehicle in the motorcade. Having hurled himself into the adjacent river by means of escape, Čabrinović was
swiftly apprehended.

Despite the assassination attempt, the motorcade rather curiously continued towards its destination, a banquet at City Hall, albeit at greater speed than before. But then it took a wrong turn down a side street – and it just happened to be a side street where another Young Bosnian, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, was lying in wait. As the cars started to reverse to return to the main street, Princip took his chance, firing two shots at the Archduke from the closest of quarters. Both Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were hit, and both died very soon after.

Dire consequences

Princip and his co-conspirators could not have foreseen what dire repercussions came out of their actions that day. The assassination was dubbed ‘the shot heard around the world’ because of its grave consequences for the entire globe. Austria-Hungary, bolstered by German support, declared war on Serbia in retaliation, before many other powers – including France, Russia and Britain – were sucked into what would later be known as World War I. The actions of those militant students down in Sarajevo precipitated the bloodiest war ever known to humankind, a conflict that claimed the lives of around 11 million soldiers and 7 million civilians. Had that motorcade not taken a wrong turn, the 20th century could have taken a very different course indeed.

This article was first published in the February 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed