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Assassination attempts have been carried out since antiquity, and not everyone has been so lucky as to survive. Just look at how many Roman emperors fell victim to the sword, knife, or poison. In fact, most assassinations are politically motivated, with presidents, prime ministers, and members of royalty all having been targeted throughout history. But some killings remain senseless and inexplicable, those of musicians for example, or advocates for peace and equality.
Click through for a gruesome timeline of victims of assassinations, and the murderers that hit their mark.
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot and mortally wounded on April 14, 1865 at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. The president died the following day. Twelve days later, Booth was shot and killed by Union Army forces.
Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, was assassinated at a public campaign event on July 8, 2022. The 67-year-old was shot while giving a speech and was seen to collapse to the ground. Abe was immediately rushed to hospital, but news broke shortly afterward that he had died from his injuries.
A 41-year-old man named Tetsuya Yamagami was taken into custody at the scene. He reportedly used a homemade gun to fire two shots at Abe. Yamagami told authorities that the motivation for the killing was Abe's connection to Japan's Unification Church, which has been accused of pressuring members to make exorbitant donations. Yamagami said his mother went bankrupt because of the church.
On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo. The act itself was callous enough, but it's what happened next that makes this killing truly momentous. After the shooting, Princip and his accomplices were arrested and implicated as a nationalist secret society, which initiated the July Crisis and led directly to the outbreak of the First World War. He would die in prison in 1918 of tuberculosis.
In a killing that shook the hip-hop world to its core, rapper, songwriter, and actor Tupac Shakur was injured in a drive-by shooting on September 7, 1996. He died six days later. There were several suspects, including rapper the Notorious B.I.G/Biggie Smalls, who denied playing a role in the murder. To date, no one has been convicted of Tupac Shakur's assassination. And in a twist of fate, Biggie was himself fatally shot in a drive-by shooting by an unknown assailant, on March 9, 1997. Many believe it was a retaliation killing.
He wasn't the first Roman emperor to die a violent death, nor was he the last. But the assassination on March 15, 44 BCE of Gaius Julius Caesar is one of the most notorious murders in Roman history. He was stabbed by senators 23 times, with at least 60 party to the conspiracy, including Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Junius Brutus.
The assassination of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170 changed the course of British history. He was murdered by knights loyal to King Henry II and his death sent shock waves throughout medieval Europe. Soon after his demise, Becket was canonized by Pope Alexander III and quickly became a popular cultist figure for the remainder of the Middle Ages.
Empress Elisabeth of Austria, affectionately known as Sisi, was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary by marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I. On September 10, 1898 while on a visit to Geneva in Switzerland, she was assassinated by Luigi Lucheni, an Italian anarchist, who stabbed her in the heart. Later sentenced to life imprisonment (capital punishment had been abolished in Geneva), Lucheni was found hanged in his cell on October 19, 1910.
King Carlos I of Portugal and his son and heir Luís Filipe were both shot and killed on February 1, 1908 in Lisbon's Terreiro do Paço by two republican activists: Alfredo Luís da Costa and Manuel Buíça. The late monarch's younger son, Manuel, was proclaimed King of Portugal a few days later. The two assassins both died in the aftermath of the attack. The assassination proved the opening salvo in Portugal's move towards becoming a republic. Indeed, Manuel II was Portugal's last king, fleeing into exile during the 5 October revolution of 1910.
On the night of July 16–17, 1918, the Russian Imperial Romanov family (Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot to death by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Ipatiev House, a merchant's residence in Yekaterinburg where they had been detained. Pictured is the room in which they were assassinated.
Irish revolutionary, soldier, and politician Michael Collins was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Anglo-Irish Treaty forces on August 22, 1922 at Bealnablath in County Cork, Ireland. Some 500,000 people attended his funeral in Dublin.
One of Spain's foremost poets and playwrights of the 20th century, Federico García Lorca was deliberately targeted and killed by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, on August 18, 1936 in Granada. His remains have never been found.
Ukrainian-Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky met a grisly end after being attacked by an ice pick wielded by Ramón Mercade on August 21, 1940 in Mexico City. Mercade was a Spanish communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. He served 19 years and 8 months in Mexican prisons for the murder, dying a free man in 1978. Pictured is the coffin of Trotsky.
The most high-profile assassination of a senior Nazi official took place in Prague on May 22, 1942 when Reinhard Heydrich was attacked by Czechoslovak resistance operatives Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. Heydrich died of the injuries sustained on June 4, 1942. Nazi reprisals were swift and deadly. Hitler ordered an attack on the village of Lidice, where 199 men were killed, 195 women were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and 95 children taken prisoner. Gabčík and Kubiš, together with co-conspirators, died in a gun battle inside Prague's Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodious. Pictured is the bomb-damaged shell of Heydrich's car.
On January 30, 1948 in New Delhi, Mahatma Gandhi was shot and killed by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse, who objected to Gandhi's tolerance for Muslims. Godse was hanged on November 15, 1949 for the assassination.
The most infamous political assassination in world history took place on November 22, 1963 when US President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of his murder.
Kennedy's assassination shocked the world. But just two days later, Oswald himself was fatally shot by Jack Ruby as he was being escorted into Dallas County Jail. To this day doubts circulate as to whether Oswald was acting alone or if he was part of a wider conspiracy. Ruby, meanwhile, died in prison in 1967.
Kennedy's death in 1963 marked the beginning of a tumultuous decade for the United States, when several political killings took place. On February 1, 1965, controversial African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X was assassinated inside the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. Three Nation of Islam members were tried and convicted of the slaying and sentenced to life imprisonment, although two were exonerated in 2021. Pictured is a wounded Malcolm X being stretched out of the ballroom by police officers. He was pronounced dead in hospital.
Pictured is a simulated view through a gunsight of the balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968. His assassin, James Earl Ray, died on April 23, 1998 while serving a life sentence.
The same year saw Robert Kennedy die from gunshots shortly after addressing an audience at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Palestinian militant Sirhan Sirhan was charged with the senator's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Kennedy was hit three times and died almost 26 hours later at the city's Good Samaritan Hospital. In this ironic photograph, Kennedy is seen attending the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. just two months earlier.
Europe in the mid-1970s was a hotbed of political activism. On May 9, 1978, the body of former Italian statesman and prime minister Aldo Moro was found, riddled with bullets, in the back of a car in Rome. He'd earlier been abducted by the left-wing terrorists organization the Red Brigade, who subsequently murdered him.
In a scenario straight out of a Bond movie, Bulgarian dissident writer and BBC broadcaster Georgi Markov, who had defected from Bulgaria in 1969, was attacked on September 7, 1978 while walking across Waterloo Bridge in London. As he was doing so, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his right thigh. He died four days later, the result of ricin, a deadly poison, delivered into his body via the tip of an umbrella. Pictured is the tiny platinum toxic ball that killed him. The Russian KGB is thought to have ordered the assassination, but to date no one has been charged with Markov's murder.
Harvey Milk (pictured) was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California. He worked out of offices in San Francisco, and on November 27 was killed along with the city's mayor, George Moscone, by Dan White, a disgruntled city supervisor. Milk's assassination was regarded by many as a hate crime, but his killer was ultimately convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. White took his own life while a free man after serving five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Milk, described later as "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States," was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was vacationing at his Irish home, Classiebawn Castle in County Sligo, in the summer of 1979 when Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon placed a radio-controlled bomb on his boat, Shadow V. On August 27, 1979, Mountbatten and his party took to the water. Shortly afterwards, the bomb was detonated. The statesman was pulled from the water alive, but died from his injuries before being brought to shore. Three other people succumbed to their injuries. McMahon was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. He was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
On the night of December 8, 1980, former Beatle John Lennon was shot outside his New York City apartment and died en route to hospital. His killer, Mark David Chapman, had apparently been angered by Lennon's lifestyle and public statements, and had planned the killing over several months. Chapman is still behind bars, having been denied parole on numerous occasions.
Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. By the time of her assassination by members of her own bodyguard unit on October 31, 1984 in New Delhi, she herself was the nation's prime minister. The assassins were caught and eventually executed.
The February 28, 1986 killing of Swedish prime minster Olaf Palme in Stockholm has never been solved. Christer Pettersson, a petty criminal, was a suspect and was eventually tried and found guilty of the crime. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Petterson was acquitted on appeal the following year. He died in 2004. Pictured is the crime scene.
On November 4, 1995 in Tel Aviv, the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Israeli right-wing extremist who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords. He is currently serving a life sentence for the murder.
The fashion world reeled in anger and disbelief after the assassination of Gianni Versace on July 15, 1997 outside his home in Miami, Florida. The shooter, Andrew Cunanan, murdered several others during a three-month period in mid-1997, which culminated with the death of the iconic Italian fashion designer. Cunanan later turned the gun on himself.
The bomb blast that ended the life of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, on February 14, 1995 also killed dozens of others. Many more were wounded. A Special Tribunal set up after the assassination found compelling evidence for the responsibility of Lebanese group Hezbollah in the killings.
It's generally assumed that the murder by poisoning of Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, who was a British-naturalized Russian defector and former spy, was sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin. He is pictured at the Intensive Care Unit of University College Hospital in London, where he died on November 23, 2006.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto waves from her car just seconds before being attacked on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The opposition leader died from a bullet wound to the neck after speaking at a rally. The Pakistan Taliban claims it killed the stateswoman.
The brutal killing of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi took place at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 18, 2018. It was carried out during an operation that reportedly involved 15 agents sent from Riyadh. His remains have not been found.
Sources: (The British Museum) (History) (CBC) (BBC) (The Times of India) (The Guardian)
See also: What was the fate of history's most infamous assassins?
History's most notorious assassinations
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LIFESTYLE Murder
Assassination attempts have been carried out since antiquity, and not everyone has been so lucky as to survive. Just look at how many Roman emperors fell victim to the sword, knife, or poison. In fact, most assassinations are politically motivated, with presidents, prime ministers, and members of royalty all having been targeted throughout history. But some killings remain senseless and inexplicable, those of musicians for example, or advocates for peace and equality.
Click through for a gruesome timeline of victims of assassinations, and the murderers that hit their mark.