10. Abraham Lincoln
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was carried out on Good Friday, April 14, 1865. President Lincoln died from the gunshot wound the following morning. Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The American Civil War was drawing to a close, just six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee to Union General U. S. Grant. The assassination was planned and carried out by John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy in an effort to rally the remaining Confederate troops to continue fighting. Lincoln was attending a stage performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater with his wife and a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and his fiancee, Clara Harris. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated,[1] though in 1835 an attempt was made to assassinate Andrew Jackson.
9. William McKinley
The William McKinley assassination occurred on September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. United States President William McKinley, attending the Pan-American Exposition, was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.
McKinley initially appeared to be recovering from his wounds, but took a turn for the worse six days after the shooting and died on September 14, 1901. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley as President. McKinley was the third of four U.S. presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881 and preceding John F. Kennedy in 1963. After McKinley’s murder, Congress officially charged the Secret Service with the physical protection of U.S. presidents.
8. Archduke Franz Ferdinand
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six Bosnian Serb assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić. The political objective of the assassination was to break Austria-Hungary’s south-Slav provinces off so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia. The assassins’ motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. Serbian military officers stood behind the attack.
At the top of these Serbian military conspirators was Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Dragutin Dimitrijević, his right hand man Major Vojislav Tankosić, and Masterspy Rade Malobabić. Major Tankosić armed (with bombs and pistols) and trained the assassins, and the assassins were given access to the same clandestine tunnel of safe-houses and agents that Rade Malobabić used for the infiltration of weapons and operatives into Austria-Hungary.
The assassins, the key members of the clandestine tunnel, and the key Serbian military conspirators who were still alive were arrested, tried, convicted and punished. Those who were arrested in Bosnia were tried in Sarajevo in October 1914. The other conspirators were arrested and tried before a Serbian kangaroo court in French-occupied Salonika in 1916-1917 on unrelated false charges; Serbia executed three of the top military conspirators. Much of what is known about the assassinations comes from these two trials and related records.
7. Leon Trotsky
On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico with an ice axe by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.
The blow was poorly delivered and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky’s bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, laboriously stating that the assassin should be made to answer questions. Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on 21 August 1940 as a result of severe brain damage. Mercader later testified at his trial:
I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.
6. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. The Martyr’s Column at the Gandhi Smriti, (Birla House), the spot where Gandhi was assassinated. After a previous failed attempt to assassinate Gandhi at the Birla House, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte returned to Pune via Mumbai (Bombay). With the help of Dr. Dattatraya Parchure and Gangadhar Dandavate, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte purchased a Beretta and reached Delhi on 29 January 1948, checking into the retiring room No. 6 at Delhi Railway Station.
5. Liaquat Ali Khan , Pakistan
On 16 October 1951, Khan was shot twice in the chest during a public meeting of the Muslim City League at Company Bagh (Company Gardens), Rawalpindi. The police immediately shot the assassin who was later identified as Saad Akbar Babrak. Khan was rushed to a hospital and given a blood transfusion, but he succumbed to his injuries. The exact motive behind the assassination has never been fully revealed. However, Khan was an ardent supporter of independence, which involved absorbing Pushtun land into Pakistan. He did not believe Pushtun land east of the Durand Line deserved to be reunited with Afghanistan after its annexation into British India in 1893. Afghans, as well as the Pushtuns living in the disputed territory, including those of Babrak’s Zadran tribe, held political animosity toward Liaquat Ali Khan because of this, and he is believed to have killed Khan after he made inflammatory statements about Afghanistan.
4. Malcolm X
On February 21, 1965, in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X began to speak to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity when a disturbance broke out in the crowd of 400. A man yelled, “Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!” As Malcolm X and his bodyguards moved to quiet the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot him in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. Two other men charged the stage and fired handguns, hitting him 16 times. Furious onlookers caught and beat one of the assassins as the others fled the ballroom. Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m., shortly after he arrived at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
3. Benazir Bhutto
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996) and then-leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections due in January 2008. She was shot after a political rally at Liaquat National Bagh; a suicide bomb was detonated immediately following the shooting. She was declared dead at 18:16 local time (13:16 UTC), at Rawalpindi General Hospital. 24 other people were killed by the bombing. Bhutto had previously survived a similar attempt on her life that killed at least 139 people, after her return from exile two months earlier.
2. Martin Luther King
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, owned by black businessman Walter Bailey (and named after his wife). King’s close friend and colleague, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the “King-Abernathy Suite.”
1. John F. Kennedy
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding with his wife Jacqueline in a Presidential motorcade.
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