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Assassinations

15 Mar 44BC Julius Caesar, Dictator and Imperator of Rome, stabbed by Marcus Junius Brutus and others at the Theater of Pompey in Rome. Beware the Ides of March.
24 Jan 41AD Caligula, Emperor of Rome, assassinated by Praetorian guard.
2 Aug 1589 Henri III, unpopular homosexual and transvestite king of France, stabbed in the stomach by monk Jacques Clément.
14 May 1610 Henri IV of France stabbed to death on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, Paris, by fanatic François Ravaillac. For punishment, Ravaillac was drawn and quartered thirteen days later.
16 Mar 1792 King Gustav III of Sweden shot in the back by Jacob Johan Anckarström at a costume ball, Royal Opera, Stockholm. Lingers from his wound until the 29th of March.
13 Jul 1793 Jean-Paul Marat assassinated by Charlotte Corday, while in his bathtub.
30 Nov 1830 Pope Pius VIII, poisoned.
30 Jan 1835 Andrew Jackson is the subject of the first recorded assassination attempt on a U.S. president. After a man fires shots at him, Jackson beats the shit out of his would-be assassin.
14 Apr 1865 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, the most famous actor in America, at Ford's Theater. Lincoln dies the following day.
2 Jul 1881 U.S. President James A. Garfield assassinated by Charles Guiteau. Garfield was shot in the chest and died from his wound on September 19.
24 Jun 1894 President of France Marie François Sadi Carnot fatally stabbed at a banquet by Italian anarchist Sante Jeronimo Caserio.
20 Jul 1900 King Umberto I, of Italy, assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci in Monza.
6 Sep 1901 U.S. President William McKinley assassinated by an anarchist with an unpronounceable name.
28 Jun 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Serbia assassinated, precipitating World War I.
29 Dec 1916 Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine and court favorite of the czarina, poisoned, shot beaten and drowned.
20 Jul 1923 Pancho Villa, bandit and Mexican revolutionary hero, shot to death while driving his car.
6 May 1932 President of France Paul Doumer assassinated by Paul Gorguloff, shot opening a bookfair in Paris.
8 Sep 1935 Corrupt U.S. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana assassinated by Carl Weiss.
20 Aug 1940 Ramon Mercader attempts to assassinate Leon Trotsky with an ice pick to the back of the head. Trotsky survives, telling his guards as they began to beat the would-be assassin, "Do not kill him. This man has a story to tell." Mercader is arrested as "Jacques Mornard", a Belgian "diplomat." Trotsky dies of his injuries the following day.
18 Apr 1942 Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, his aircraft targeted by the U.S. based on information decoded from radio intercepts.
27 May 1942 Reinhard Heydrich assassinated by Czech partisans, under orders from the United States.
30 Jan 1948 Mahatma Gandhi, pacifist founder of India, assassinated by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse.
20 Jul 1951 King Abdullah of Jordan, in Jerusalem.
14 Jul 1958 King Faisal II of Iraq, in a military coup.
1 Nov 1963 President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Deim, assassinated.
22 Nov 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald from a window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas, TX.
21 Feb 1965 Malcolm X assassinated.
6 Sep 1966 Founder of South Africa's Apartheid system, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, stabbed and killed in the Parliament building by radical Dimitri Tsafendas.
4 Apr 1968 Martin Luther King assassinated.
5 Jun 1968 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in California. He dies the following day.
11 Sep 1973 Chilean President Salvador Allende is assassinated in a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet.
25 Mar 1975 Saudi Arabia's King Faisal assassinated by an insane nephew. The nephew was subsequently beheaded.
7 Sep 1978 Walking to the bus stop, BBC journalist Georgi Markov suddenly feels a sharp pain in his right calf. A KGB assassin had jabbed him with an umbrella tip, rigged to inject a tiny platinum sphere. The pellet is laden with ricin, a castor-based toxin with no known antidote. Markov dies in the hospital four agonizing days later.
27 Nov 1978 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassinated by policeman Dan White.
27 Aug 1979 Louis Mountbatten, 1st First Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Last Viceroy of India, killed by a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army in his boat afloat on Donegal Bay.
26 Oct 1979 President Park Chung-hee of South Korea assassinated by intelligence agency chief Kim Jae-kyu.
17 Sep 1980 Anastasio Somoza, former dictator of Nicaragua, assassinated in Paraguay.
8 Dec 1980 Beatle John Lennon shot and killed by Mark David Chapman, outside Lennon's New York City apartment.
13 May 1981 At 5:15 pm, Mehmet Ali Agca attempts to assassinate Pope John Paul II, at St. Peter's Square in Rome. The Pope is wounded in the arm and abdomen, but not fatally.
6 Oct 1981 Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt and peacemaker with Israel, assassinated on live TV.
21 Aug 1983 Benigno Aquino assassinated by agents of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This sets off a People Power revolution which topples the dictator and his shoe-loving wife.
31 Oct 1984 Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, assassinated.
28 Feb 1986 Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, assassinated leaving a Stockholm movie theater, by an unknown assailant.
9 Aug 1988 President Zia al Haq assassinated and 30 others killed when a bomb explodes aboard their C130 transport, in Bahawalpu, Pakistan.
21 May 1991 Rajiv Gandhi, Former Prime Minister of India, assassinated by Tamil Tigers.
29 Oct 1994 Armed with a semi-automatic rifle, Colorado upholsterer Francisco Duran fires 27 shots at the White House from the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Ave. Because he opted for Chinese-made SKS rifle, few of Duran's shots come anywhere near the building. Nevertheless, he receives a life sentence for attempting to assassinate President Clinton.
4 Nov 1995 Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, assassinated at a peace rally by a right wing Jewish extremist.
1 Jun 2001 Essentially the entire Nepalese Royal Family is assassinated by Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, Crown Prince and heir to the throne. The assassin Dipendra, who shot himself in the head and was in a coma, was subsequently named King. After Dipendra's death, Crown Prince Gyanendra assumed the throne.
6 May 2002 Right wing Dutch candidate Pim Fortuyn assassinated by an animal-rights extremist, in the Hilversum suburb of Amsterdam.
12 Mar 2003 Zoran Djindjic, Prime Minister of Serbia, shot and killed in Belgrade, likely by agents of the Serbian mafia.
11 Sep 2003 Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh assassinated by an unknown assailant, stabbed while shopping in a Stockholm department store. Lindh was the one of the main figures in the plebiscite to decide whether or not to adopt the Euro, which was held several days after the assassination.

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