Both ancient and modern history are no stranger to targeted killings. As people continue to
wrong each other, prominent figures around the globe face the threat of violence. With
that in mind, here are some infamous assassinations that changed the world forever.
Julius Caesar was a Roman politician and general who was popular with the masses. After he
was named dictator for life in 44 B.C., the Senate feared that they were losing power,
so they hatched a plan to end his life. The conspirators included friends and enemies
of Caesar alike. As many as 60 senators were involved in the plot, though only a few are
remembered today. Brutus is the main betrayer in William Shakespeare's version of events,
but in reality Decimus was the closest man to Caesar involved. He was the one chosen
to convince Caesar to go to the meeting where his killing would take place.
On the Ides of March, the Roman name for the 15th of the month, Caesar was stabbed 23 times
in an ambush on the Senate floor. The assailants fled to the Capitoline Hill, where they were
met with a mix of support and disgust. The conspirators had hoped to restore the status
quo and regain power lost under Caesar. But the ultimate effect of his death was the rise
of Octavian, also known as Augustus, who consolidated power and became the first emperor of Rome.
The conspirators' plans completely backfired, as power shifted hands and the Republic became
an Empire.
Oda Nobunaga was a 16th century Japanese warrior and politician. He's known as the first "Great
Unifier" of Japan, as his military conquest brought together over half the Japanese provinces
under his singular rule and helped end the Sengoku period. That time was famous for its
samurai, trained fighters who operated on behalf of feudal lords, or in Nobunaga's case,
their own political gain.
Nobunaga's success caused the envy of many men, including one of his closest vassals,
who betrayed him by directing thousands of soldiers to ambush Nobunaga and his party
in a temple. Nobunaga knew that he was outnumbered and thus instructed his crew to hold them
off while he ritualistically killed himself. Although his reign was accompanied by much
violence, it paved the way for a more peaceful era after Japan was unified into a singular
entity. The years following the Sengoku era are known as the Edo period, which lasted
from 1603 to 1867, a time of significant cultural and economic development.
By 1865, John Wilkes Booth had had enough of Abraham Lincoln. Booth was an actor and
vocal supporter of slavery who had been a part of several plots to kidnap the president
and end the Civil War. When those plots failed and the war ended, an enraged Booth hatched
a plan to assassinate the president, vice president, and secretary of state. When the
time came, he snuck into the president's box at Ford's Theater and shot him through the
back of the head. He proceeded to jump onto the stage and yell something, either "the
South is avenged," or "Sic semper tyrannis," the state motto of Virginia. Then he fled
on horseback. The president was taken into care but died early the next morning.
Lincoln was succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson, a former senator who remained loyal
to the Union despite his Southern heritage. Alas, his leniency towards the South in the
Reconstruction era resulted in near-universal amnesty for Confederates, meaning that state
leadership didn't change much following the war. Southern state governments sought to
maintain the status quo as much as possible, writing strict "black codes” that essentially
put Black southerners in the nearly the same position that they were in before the war.
After Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
journeyed to his new territorial acquisition to watch symbolic military exercises. The
annexation was quite controversial as Serbian and Bosnian nationalist sects had been growing
since Austria first colonized Bosnia in 1878. The exercises were meant as a show of power
meant to dissuade any revolutionaries. Ferdinand's visit turned out to be a notably bad idea,
as he was almost assassinated multiple times by the revolutionary group the Young Bosnians.
After smuggling bombs, guns, and cyanide capsules across the Serbian border into Bosnia, the
Young Bosnians began to strike. They threw a bomb at the archduke's car, which missed
its target but injured bystanders. At least two Young Bosnians were in close enough range
to shoot, but they lost their nerve.
Despite these near-death experiences, the archduke and his wife decided to remain for
their final scheduled event. As they were leaving, they accidentally turned down a side
street where one of the disgruntled Young Bosnians happened to be. Gavrilo Princip took
advantage of the moment and fired, striking both Ferdinand and his wife. The two died
at the scene, and Princip was taken into custody. The assassination led to World War I, with
Austria-Hungary essentially blaming Serbia for the blood of its son.
Patrice Lumumba was a renowned anti-colonial, Pan-Africanist thinker, and political leader
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium. When
Belgium held democratic elections in an attempt to install a puppet regime, they instead accidentally
got Lumumba elected as the DRC's first prime minister. When he took power, he instituted
a number of progressive policies.
But Belgium wasn't giving up its colony without a fight. Lumumba called on the Soviet Union
for help defending against the colonial oppressors, which angered the Western world due to Cold
War tensions. Chaos ensued, and multiple Western powers targeted Lumumba's life. Multiple plans
were launched to incapacitate him, including hiring assassins and abductors. The CIA even
flew in a rare poison to put in his toothpaste. After a series of mishaps and failed attempts,
Lumumba was kidnapped, tortured, and shot to death by a firing squad on January 17,
1961. The incident was sadly not unique, as six African leaders' deaths were plotted by
Western powers that decade. This had a lasting effect on African relations with Western nations
and has set the continent back significantly in terms of progressive policies. Tensions
remain high to this day, and Belgium even formally apologized in 2018 for its role in
Lumumba's death.
"Belgium is now taking steps to re-assess that history. To honor those figures, it opened
a square named after Patrice Lumumba."
Sometimes referred to as the "architect of apartheid," Hendrik Verwoerd was the prime
minister of South Africa from 1958 until his death in 1966. It should perhaps come as no
surprise then that the man who came to epitomize racial animosity in South Africa faced not
one but two assassination attempts. In the first, carried out by businessman David Pratt,
Verwoerd sustained two shots to the face but survived. Six years later, parliamentary page
Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed Verwoerd to death after ambushing him on the Senate floor.
Both Pratt and Tsafendas were tried under the pretense of lunacy. The categorization
of them as insane was meant to deflect negativity from the apartheid regime. It worked: it wasn't
until 2018 that Tsafendas began to be viewed as a determined political radical rather than
just crazy. Propaganda can have a powerful hold on a society, even after the systems
it was designed to protect have been dismantled.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was standing on the balcony of a Memphis motel when he was killed
on April 4, 1968. The manhunt that followed led to the arrest of escaped convict James
Earl Ray, who was apprehended in London's Heathrow airport. He confessed nearly a year
later and was charged with a 99-year sentence. Since the trial, though, King's family has
repeatedly asserted their belief in Ray's innocence. Their skepticism lies in the FBI's
repeated torture of King, a convenient bag of evidence left at the scene, and Ray's post-trial
insistence that he was set up by a man named Raoul.
Though the government has supposedly debunked the Raoul story, a man came forward in 1993
with conflicting evidence. He owned the diner under the hotel room Ray supposedly operated
out of and confessed in civil court to being part of a government-led plan to assassinate
King for which Ray was the scapegoat. Based on this evidence, jurors at the trial found
the government guilty of conspiring to assassinate the civil rights leader. The U.S. Department
of Justice launched a new investigation into the claims, but in 2000 they issued a report
rejecting both the findings of the civil suit and all claims of a conspiracy.
King's death led to the expedited passing of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, which he'd
been campaigning for in the days leading up to his death.
"Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement has been shot
to death in Memphis, Tennessee."
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to sit on the San Francisco board of supervisors,
and only the fifth openly gay person in the country to take public office. After his 1977
election, he dedicated himself to issues like fair housing and ending workplace discrimination.
He also even became friends with some of his political peers with differing views than
his own. One of them was Dan White, a pro-police Catholic, who thought so highly of Milk that
he invited him to his son's baptism. But nearly a year later, on November 27, 1978, White
shot both Milk and Mayor George Moscone in their respective city hall offices.
"Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed."
"Jesus Christ!"
Those close to White claim that his main motive wasn't homophobia, but rather a feeling of
political betrayal. He had quit his position as a supervisor, and when he begged the mayor
for his job back, Milk lobbied against him. After White received a lenient sentence of
seven years, protests broke out across the city. Known as the White Night riots, they
were a series of clashes between gay people and the police after peaceful protests were
met with confrontation. These events brought gay rights issues to greater national prominence,
and Milk's legacy carved the way for a series of LGBTQ+ candidates to take office.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin dedicated his time in office to peace. Before his untimely
death, he'd committed to Palestinian self-rule and ended a war with Jordan that spanned nearly
half a century. A former soldier, he'd previously spent 30 years fighting against the accords
he went on to forge, making him a symbol of the peace that could be achieved in the region.
But not everyone wanted peace. The Zionists, a group of Israeli nationalists who opposed
the recognition of Palestine as a separate legitimate state, did not agree with Rabin's
tactics. Multiple rabbis even issued statements saying that it would be acceptable to kill
Rabin.
While attending a peace rally, Rabin's cohort urged him to wear a bulletproof vest. But
he loved the people of Israel so deeply that he refused to believe someone in his nation
would want to hurt him. His belief in his countrymen proved tragically unfounded, as
he was shot twice in the back by devout Zionist Yigal Amir on November 4, 1995. Even more
tragically, Amir got exactly what he wanted, as the peace between Israel and Palestine
that had come so close under Rabin's tenure quickly crumbled under his successors.
"Truly shocking news from the Middle East tonight. Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
has been assassinated."
Benazir Bhutto was the first female leader to be democratically elected to a majority
Muslim nation, becoming prime minister of Pakistan in 1988. Despite this milestone achievement,
she was a somewhat controversial figure. After being convicted of corruption during her two
terms in office, she returned from self-exile after eight years to run for a third term.
Her prospects looked bright, though her competitor and current head of state Pervez Musharraf
warned her it would be dangerous for her to return. Despite this danger, though, Musharraf
denied her foreign protection, instead offering her bodyguards from the Pakistani police force
instead. That protection would've been very welcome, because after surviving one assassination
attempt in October 2007, Bhutto was killed that December.
The Pakistani Taliban initially claimed credit for her death, but the Pakistani government's
handling of the situation led to plenty of suspicion. The official narrative was that
Bhutto had died when shrapnel from a suicide bomber's vest cracked her skull. But doctors
performing her autopsy claimed that they were told to keep quiet about the gunshot wounds
they found. Sources close to Bhutto also claimed that she received a threatening phone call
from Musharraf just months before the election. Ultimately, the rift between a political and
military elite that became apparent during Bhutto's time in office was only widened by
her death.
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