Sometimes, all it takes is one angry man with a gun or knife to change the course of history.
These are the ten most shocking assassinations in human history.
#10.
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was one of the first women to ever lead a Muslim country, she served
as Prime Minister of Pakistan not once but twice.
The head of the Pakistani People’s Party, she had many supporters - and many powerful
enemies.
Her father had previously been Prime Minister - before being ousted and executed in a military
coup.
When she succeeded him ten years later, she would face corruption charges and return to
exile - but would return to Pakistan to run again and negotiate cooperation with the current
leader, Pervez Musharraf.
It would be a deadly mistake.
She had been targeted for assassination before, and knew her life was in danger.
Only two months after she returned to Pakistan, a massive bombing nearly killed her.
Thankfully she survived, but 180 people didn’t.
She tried to obtain additional security, but had been unable to by December 27th, 2007
when she attended a political rally in Rawalpindi.
As she was meeting supporters, an explosion rocked the crowd.
Bhutto retreated to her vehicle and prepared to drive away - when suddenly, a man with
a bomb attached to himself exploded right near the car, as an assassin fired multiple
shots.
The car drove Bhutto to the hospital, but she was declared dead less than an hour after
arrival.
And this was only the start of the story.
At first, reports came in that Bhutto had died of gunshots or shrapnel from the attack,
but the Interior Ministry came up with a surprising claim - she had actually died when her head
hit the sunroof during the bombing.
Many said that didn’t make sense - was Musharraf’s government trying to cover up the truth?
The assassination was blamed on the terror group Al Qaeda, but many suspected that Bhutto’s
many enemies in the government may have had a hand in it.
Arguably Pakistan’s most iconic politician was dead - and that left a power vacuum in
the country’s political system ever since.
This next assassination saw a young leader cut down in his prime - and led to decades
of controversy afterwards.
#9.
Malcolm X
As the 1960s dawned, the civil rights movement was dominated by two men - the diplomatic
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the fiery Malcolm X.
The Muslim minister and activist had risen from a troubled childhood and joined the Nation
of Islam in prison, becoming one of its most prominent faces.
His advocacy for black liberation gained him many supporters - but in the 1960s, he became
disillusioned with the Nation of Islam’s unique brand of the faith and started practicing
a more faithful type of Sunni Islam.
This led to radicals in his own group turning on him - and some days it was hard to tell
who wanted him dead more, white racists or Nation of Islam radicals.
But one was about to break through.
The threats escalated, as the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, called for
Malcolm X to be beheaded.
His house was burned down under mysterious circumstances, but he didn’t let it deter
him - on February 21st, 1965, he spoke to a large gathering in Manhattan.
Suddenly, there was a scuffle in the crowd, and a man burst forward and shot Malcolm X
with a sawed-off shotgun.
As the minister collapsed, two other men came forward and began shooting with handguns - hitting
him repeatedly.
Malcolm X was rushed to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead - with a shocking 31 total
bullet wounds between the three guns.
A manhunt was about to begin.
The first assassin, Talmadge Hayer, was captured and beaten by the crowd.
Witnesses soon identified the other two assassins who were arrested - but at trial, Hayer confessed
and claimed the other two men were innocent.
The jury didn’t find the testimony of a confessed killer credible and convicted all
three.
All three served decades in prison, but survived to be paroled in the 2000s - and in 2021,
the District Attorney of New York announced that the two latter men had been wrongly convicted.
Which begs the question - was this truly a hit job by Nation of Islam radicals, or was
there a more powerfull figure involved?
He wasn’t the only leader assassinated by his own people.
#8.
Yitzhak Rabin
Ever since the state of Israel had been established in 1948 after the conclusion of the War of
Independence, the small country had faced conflict.
First at the hands of its neighbors, and later with the Palestinian residents of the region
- many of whom had been fighting against the Israeli occupation since Israel reclaimed
more territory in the conclusion of the 1967 war.
Terror attacks led to Israeli military raids, and the cycle continued - but one man was
determined to make a change.
Yitzhak Rabin, the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, had taken a huge political risk to
negotiate a peace deal with Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat, and both sides hoped it would
lead to an end to the conflict.
But it wasn’t to be.
Rabin had made many prominent enemies as a result of his peace deal, with radicals on
both the Israeli and Palestinian sides condemning the pact.
Right-wing Israelis were engaging in street protests, and Rabin decided to personally
attend an anti-violence rally to show his solidarity with his allies.
After speaking at the rally, Rabin walked towards his car - and a solitary man stepped
out, firing two shots with a pistol at the Prime Minister.
They drove the wounded leader to the hospital, where the surgeons were unable to save him
after surgery.
The assassin was arrested at the scene, and many speculated that this might have been
a terror attack to derail the peace process.
It was - but the reasoning behind the attack shocked everyone.
The assassin was identified as Yigal Amir, a law student and right-wing extremist who
opposed any concessions towards the Palestinians and viewed Rabin as an enemy of the Jewish
people.
He would be sentenced to life in prison, but the fallout from his actions would span decades.
Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres would lose the next election - and be replaced by far-right
leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Without his negotiating partner, Arafat would once again become radicalized - and less than
a decade later, a new surge in terror attacks destroyed any hopes that the conflict could
be ended peacefully.
This next assassination wasn’t so shocking for the why - but the how and where.
#7.
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko was a former federal security official in Russia who met the same
fate as many others when he fell out of favor with the government.
In 1998, he faced prosecution for revealing state secrets, but managed to flee to England
where he began telling the government everything - revealing shocking details about the corruption
of the Russian state.
Some of his allegations were extreme and were never proven, such as accusing the Russians
of organizing many of the worst terror attacks on their soil as false flags to justify wars.
But his old enemy Boris Yeltsin would soon die and be succeeded by the more ruthless
Vladimir Putin
And Putin was infamous for how he dealt with his opponents.
In 2006, Litvinenko made another public accusation against Putin, claiming that he had been behind
the death of a prominent Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who had been killed in
what looked like a random attck in her apartment elevator.
And only two weeks later, he fell severely ill.
As he was hospitalized, his condition got worse and worse - and doctors had no idea
why.
As he was breathing his last breath, he stated to officers that he believed that Putin had
found a way to assassinate him from the other side of the continent.
Before he died, photos were released of the dying man - and the public was horrified.
Litvinenko died on November 1st, but that would only be the beginning of the mystery.
The investigation continued, and while doctors weren’t able to find any clues, an international
team was soon assembled - one that specializes in radioactive weapons.
They found Polonium trails around London, which indicated that someone had used the
highly radioactive isotope to target Litvinenko in London multiple times before successfully
poisoning him.
They eventually zeroed in on two prominent Russian businessmen and politicians who had
traveled to the UK around the time and had close ties to Putin - the kind of ties that
could be used to compel someone to pull off an assassination on another country’s soil.
What was most shocking about this case wasn’t that one man died - it was that it indicated
that for Putin’s enemies, no part of the world was safe.
But what could drive someone to assassinate the world’s most famous pacifist?
#6.
Mahatma Gandhi
It had been a trying time for India.
The country had just gained its independence from Britain years earlier, which was accompanied
by the difficult Partition of India that split the old colony into majority-Hindu India and
majority-Muslim Pakistan.
But amid it all was the country’s guiding force - the tireless independence and anti-violence
activist Mahatma Gandhi.
The leader of the Indian National Congress since 1921, he was known for his humility
and willing to suffer for his cause, which included extended hunger strikes against British
oppression.
He was imprisoned multiple times, but lived to see his beloved country gain independence.
But he wouldn’t live past 1948.
Gandhi had moved to Delhi to try to calm tensions in the wake of the partition, and many Hindu
activists in the area were enraged that so much territory had been given away.
One of those was Nathuram Godse, a resident of the Deccan region who had been known for
his rebellion campaigns against the local Muslim ruler.
Like Gandhi, he also spent time in prison for his civil disobedience - but unlike Gandhi,
he didn’t come out of prison convinced of the worthiness of non-violence.
He came out bound on revenge, and he was disgusted by what he perceived as Gandhi’s betrayal
- the leader was currently on a hunger strike to convince India to release promised funds
to Pakistan.
But Godse wouldn’t let him reach the end of that hunger strike.
Gandhi was staying at a local temple, and Godse and his accomplices plotted how best
to reach him.
They first tried to throw a grenade at Gandhi when he was giving a speech, but missed and
the crowd prevented them from trying again.
The 78-year-old Gandhi continued to go about his life until Godse ambushed him on January
30th and shot him four times.
The elderly Gandhi was mortally wounded, and Godse was captured by the crowd.
He confused that he didn’t feel a shred of guilt for his actions and was executed
only a year after his crime.
Most of the public was still in shock, they knew Godse was known for his strong beliefs,
but few could’ve predicted that he would go so far as to prove them.
This next assassination was much more predictable.
#5.
Reinhard Heydrich
The Nazis were known for their brutal rules they placed upon occupied territories.
As countries including Poland and Czechoslovakia were conquered, they were put under Nazi leadership.
Citizens were conscripted into slave labor, minorities were deported and murdered, and
national coffers were emptied as the citizens starved.
One of the masterminds of this was Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s commander of the Reich
Security Main Office.
Not only was he a key in the creation of the Holocaust, but he served as acting governor
of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - which included the conquered Czechoslovakia.
But the Czechs had something to say about that.
The Nazis were notoriously well-protected, and none of Hitler’s top officials had been
successfully targeted during the war.
But this operation was different - not only was it organized by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile,
but they received training from the British Special Operations division to ensure everything
went to plan.
Preparation for the assasination lasted for almost a year, and a new weapon was developed
- an armor-piercing grenade.
The agents were covertly sent into Prague, and on May 27th, 1942, Heydrich set out on
his daily commute.
His car was ambushed by one man with a gun - and Heydrich ordered his driver to stop
instead of fleeing!
The armor piercing grenade was thrown at Heydrich’s car after which a gunfight ensued resulting
in the Nazi official being mortally wounded.
It was the biggest blow against the Nazi war machine yet - but it would come at a heavy
cost.
This was a massive embarrassment for Hitler, and he wanted revenge.
The initial plans he drew up involved killing tens of thousands of Czech citizens - but
the Nazis needed the production of goods in the region to stay high.
So instead, mass arrests were ordered and thousands were ultimately killed.
The assassins went on the run, with the Nazis in hot pursuit.
And while it would be three more years before Hitler’s regime ultimately fell, the death
of Reinhard Heydrich showed the world one important thing - as protected as Hitler’s
inner circle was, they were not invincible.
This next assassination would go down in history because of its target.
#4.
James A. Garfield
Garfield had only been in office for three months, and was seen as a fairly generic President.
He had been elected on a platform of normalcy and maintaining the status quo.
Noone expected for him to have any political enemies.
His Vice President Chester A. Arthur also maintained a low profile, and no one would
have expected him to be targeted by an assassin.
But it turns out there was a man out there with a grudge against the inoffensive president.
Charles Guiteau didn’t fit the profile of a Presidential assassin - he was a writer
and lawyer who was actually a supporter of Garfield’s campaign and revised a speech
in favor of him at one point.
And in his mind, he believed THAT was the key to Garfield’s victory.
Clearly he should be rewarded for this with a consulship - maybe to Paris!
He wrote several times to Garfield, demanding his due, and was ignored.
That led him to Washington DC, where he became increasingly poor as he fell deeper into insanity.
As Garfield was set to depart Washington on vacation, Guiteau ambushed him at the train
station and shot him twice.
Guiteau was arrested, and Garfield was tended to by doctors - he was severely wounded, but
the gunshots didn’t seem fatal.
However, both the President and assassin would be the victims of some seriously bad luck.
One of the bullets had only grazed Garfield, but the other was lodged inside him.
This led to months of strange treatments as doctors tried to find and remove it.
Garfield’s condition was unstable during this time, and he struggled to keep down solid
foods.
He lived almost three months before eventually dying from his injuries - and most historians
believe this was the fault of the treatments he endured rather than the initial bullet
wounds.
But the fact remained that the President was dead and Guiteau had shot him, which turned
a 1st degree murder case to a Capital crime case.
The hapless, deluded assassin would plead insanity - not a big stretch - but the jury
didn’t buy it, and Guiteau would make history as the first Presidential assassin to be executed.
But this assassination was eclipsed by the one that came before it.
#3.
Abraham Lincoln
It was probably the most famous assassination of all time.
Abraham Lincoln was one of the most beloved, and most hated, Presidents in US history.
His determination to keep the Union intact and later to end slavery made him many enemies
in the South - something that continued after he had secured the surrender of the Confederacy.
As he battled to pass an amendment to end slavery once and for all, a plot was brewing.
That wasn’t the shock - but the circumstances of the assasination would shake the entire
country once again.
Because his assassin was a household name.
Imagine if Cary Grant really, really hated FDR - hated him enough to try to kill him.
That was the situation with Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
He wasn’t just a die-hard Confederacy supporter and noted racist - he was one of the most
acclaimed and famous stage actors of the mid-1800s!
Lincoln and his wife were watching a play at Ford’s Theater when Booth took advantage
of a lapse in the President’s security, entered his box, and shot him in the back
of the head before leaping off the balcony.
He was injured, but managed to escape, starting one the biggest manhunts in American history.
This assassination would have some of the most far-reaching consequences in American
history.
Booth would eventually be cornered and shot by police - there would be no trial this time,
at least not of him.
But many co-conspirators were captured and put on trial.
The owner of the tavern where the plot was hatched was executed - and even the doctor
who treated Booth’s broken leg would wind up in prison!
But it couldn’t undo what Booth had done - especially since Lincoln’s new Vice President,
Andrew Johnson, was a known sympathizer towards the South’s cause and undid many of Lincoln’s
Reconstruction policies.
It’s likely that Booth’s blood grudge may have set back the civil rights many decades.
But one of the most shocking political assassinations was also one of the first.
#2.
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar was a good Emperor - at least in terms of expansion and prestige.
His reign saw the Empire rapidly grow in size and wealth, and many people in the public
were happy to let him take whatever he needed to rule effectively.
But soon it became clear that he wasn’t just expanding his power - he was seeking
to become the sole voice of Rome.
When the Roman Senate ordered him to disband his army, he refused and was soon declared
dictator in perpetuity.
He frequently disrespected the checks and balances of the government and seemed to be
growing closer and closer to declaring himself as the king of Rome.
Many in his inner circle were even starting to worry - after all, if he was getting close
to putting the Senate out of a job, what would happen to them after?
And the conspiracy be would started by those close to him.
Cassius Longinus was one of the first to realize that something needed to be done about Caesar,
and he soon recruited his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus.
They knew they had to strike soon - and they pulled in other powerful men into the conspiracy.
They even considered recruiting the famous orator Cicero but decided he was too cautious
and too old.
It was decided that they would ambush Caesar at one of his Senate meetings - on the Ides
of March.
Of course, this was Ancient Rome - no guns available - which meant the conspirators would
have to get up close and personal.
The attack would go down in history.
The sheer scope of the plot would become clear when all the conspirators drew their knives.
Caesar was stabbed 23 times in total, but an autopsy indicated that only one of them
was fatal.
The conspiracy was successful - but the larger goal wasn’t achieved.
Caesar’s successors would continue in his footsteps, and public shock at the assassination
led to less resistance to the growing dictatorship.
In the end, Rome’s day as a Republic would soon be done, and the Roman Empire would dawn
- but fascination over Caesar’s fate would spawn a Shakespeare play and countless books,
movies, and dramas.
But no assassination had more shocking details than this final one.
#1.
John F. Kennedy
The youngest President ever elected, John F. Kennedy gained the support of many Americans
with his progressive policies - and as the first Catholic President, he had many bitter
enemies.
Kennedy had survived an assassination plot as President-Elect, and had recently guided
the country through a nuclear stand-off in the Caribbean.
But as he arrived in Dallas for a tour, history was about to repeat itself.
Three Presidents had previously been assassinated here, and security wasn’t airtight, with
the biggest flaw being the fact that the President was able to sit in an open-roofed car to wave
to the public.
All the previous assassins had been close-quarters shooters - but not this one.
Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t seem to fit the profile of an assassin, but the US Marine
had been radicalized and had even defected to the Soviet Union at one point.
He set up his sniper rifle in the Texas School Book Depository - and waited to fire the shot
that was heard around the world.
Kennedy was killed immediately, and the Texas Governor in the car with him was wounded.
He would escape, killing a Dallas police officer in a confrontation, but he was eventually
apprehended.
But there was one more shocking twist to the assassination - because it came as a two-for-one
deal.
Two days later, Oswald was being held in the Dallas Police Department while plans were
made to move him to another jail.
While he was being transported, Jack Ruby - a local nightclub owner with mob ties - stepped
out and shot Oswald oncein the chest, killing him.
The infamous assassin would never see trial, and Ruby was arrested without incident.
Some called him a hero, while others wanted him prosecuted for interrupting the course
of justice.
He would ultimately be convicted and end up dying in prison while awaiting a new trial
on appeal, a month after being diagnosed with cancer.
Was he an angry citizen wanting revenge for the President - or was there a larger conspiracy
trying to silence Oswald before he could speak at trial?
Want to learn about the craziest assassinations that didn’t happen?
Watch “The Weird Reason These 10 Assassination Attempts Failed Miserably”, or check out
this video instead.