©

Getty Images

John Wilkes Booth -

John Wilkes Booth is one of the most infamous personalities in American history books. Booth ruined a promising career in stage acting for himself when he decided to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States.

©

Public Domain

John Wilkes Booth -

After shooting Lincoln in the back of the head, Booth and his accomplice David Herold went on the run for 12 days, until they were tracked down to a tobacco farm in Virginia. Herold chose to surrender himself to the Union troops, but Booth had to be driven out by setting the barn he was hiding in on fire. When Booth fled the inferno, he was promptly shot.

©

Getty Images

Nathuram Godse -

Mahatma Gandhi, known the world over as the epitome of a pacifist, was largely responsible for India gaining independence from England in 1947. While he was generally adored for his principles of tolerance and non-violence, Gandhi still had his enemies.

©

Getty Images

Nathuram Godse -

Just one year after India won its independence from England, Gandhi was shot three times in the torso on his way to a prayer meeting by Nathuram Godse, apparently due to Godse’s anti-Muslim sentiment and his anger towards Gandhi’s teachings of acceptance (Gandhi himself was a Sanatani Hindu). Against the wishes of Gandhi’s sons, who claimed their father would never support capital punishment, Godse was hung in 1949.

©

Getty Images

Mark David Chapman -

John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, killed not only one of the most influential musicians of modern history, but also a classic novel in the process. After shooting Lennon from close range in front of his New York apartment, Chapman sat on the sidewalk and opened a copy of 'The Catcher in the Rye.'

©

Getty Images

Mark David Chapman -

Chapman was denied probation 11 times as of 2020, and will likely die in prison. At the time of his arrest, Chapman claimed he took Lennon’s life because the musician failed to lead a life of God. More recently, he’s stated his motives were more fueled by jealousy than righteousness.

©

Getty Images

Charles Guiteau -

Just four months after being inaugurated as the 20th President of the United States, James Garfield was exiting a train in Baltimore, Maryland, where Charles Guiteau, a lawyer and hard-line Republican, was waiting for the president, and shot Garfield twice in the back.

©

Getty Images

Charles Guiteau -

Guiteau was long thought by his family to be insane, and after his hanging his brain was preserved for scientific analysis. Examiners found signs of syphilis in Guiteau, which, in the 19th century, was widely believed to cause insanity. Later psychological examinations have shown that he suffered from schizophrenia. The remains of his brain are on display in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.

©

Getty Images

Edward Oxford -

Queen Victoria suffered no less than eight attempts on her life during her reign. Not one of these attempts was successful, and she died of natural causes at the ripe age of 81. The first of these attempts, in 1840, was the work of Edward Oxford.

©

Public Domain

Edward Oxford -

While no one was harmed in the shooting, least of all the queen, Oxford was nonetheless arrested and charged with treason. A jury found him “not guilty by reason of insanity,” and he was institutionalized for more than a decade until he was exiled to Australia, where he lived quietly until his death in 1900.

©

Public Domain

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme -

Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States, came close to death in Sacramento, California, in 1975, when 24-year-old Lynette “Squeaky” Page, a devotee of Charles Manson, brandished a pistol during one of his public appearances. Secret Service agents detained her before she could fire, but she was nonetheless sentenced to life in prison.

©

Getty Images

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme -

Twelve years later, Fromme caught wind of Manson being sick, and successfully broke out of prison to try and go see him. Fromme would never make it to Manson, as she was caught the next day, no more than 25 miles (40 km) from her West Virginia prison. After serving only 34 years of her life sentence, Fromme was released on parole in 2009, and currently lives in upstate New York.

©

Getty Images

Gavrilo Princip -

World War I began after Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. His assassin was a 19-year-old member of the Bosnian resistance group known as the Black Hand, named Gavrilo Princip.

©

Getty Images

Gavrilo Princip -

Due to Princip’s young age, the courts couldn’t charge him with the death penalty, and they instead charged him with 20 years imprisonment. However, Princip died only four years later, of tuberculosis, at the young age of 23.

©

Getty Images

Lee Harvey Oswald -

On November 22, 1963, while riding in a blue convertible through Dallas, Texas, John F. Kennedy was shot in the head in front of thousands of people. The surrounding area was immediately locked down, and eventually Lee Harvey Oswald was cornered and captured in the Texas Theater.

©

Getty Images

Lee Harvey Oswald -

Despite his arrest, Oswald would hardly see any jail time. Just two days after the assassination, on November 24, while in policy custody, Oswald was shot dead by suspected mobster Jack Ruby. 

©

Getty Images

James Earl Ray -

James Earl Ray was in and out of prison for most of his life for robbery and other petty crimes, but changed the course of American history when he assassinated the legendary and indescribably important civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee.

©

Getty Images

James Earl Ray -

Ray initially escaped, and a two-month-long manhunt ensued. At the time, it was the most expensive investigation ever carried out by the FBI. Eventually, Ray was caught in London, England, and sentenced to 99 years in prison. In 1998, he died in prison from liver failure.

©

Getty Images

Violet Gibson -

One day in Rome, in April 1926, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini was walking through a crowd of supporters after a speech. Hidden in the crowd was Violet Gibson, an Irish Catholic who had come to Rome with the purpose of assassinating the Italian dictator.

©

Public Domain

Violet Gibson -

Although Gibson was at close range when she fired her pistol, the first shot only grazed the fascist’s nose, and the second shot backfired. Despite this direct and deliberate attempt on Mussolini’s life, Gibson faced no punitive action, and was released into the custody of an English mental asylum.

©

Getty Images

Leon Czolgosz -

William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, was shot in the stomach during a public appearance in Buffalo, New York, in the fall of 1901. While it took McKinley another few weeks to die from an infection of the wounds, his assailant was captured immediately and sentenced to death.

©

Getty Images

Leon Czolgosz -

Leon Czolgosz, a steelworker involved with the New York anarchist movement, was executed via the electric chair shortly after McKinley’s passing. Legend has it that Thomas Edison attended the execution and recorded its events, in an attempt to gather evidence that Tesla’s alternating-current mode of electricity, used for the execution, was more dangerous than his own direct-current method.

©

Getty Images

Brutus -

In one of the most famous assassination stories in history, Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by his close friend and advisor Marcus Junius Brutus, with the help of other Roman senators. This fateful day in 44 BCE later came to be known as the Ides of March.

©

Getty Images

Brutus -

Brutus was promptly exiled from Rome by Augustus Caesar, Julius’ successor. After a number of attempts to regain some semblance of power, and two brutal defeats at the hands of Mark Antony, Brutus took his own life in 42 BCE.

©

Getty Images

Giuseppe Zangara -

Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian-born bricklayer, made an attempt on President Franklin Roosevelt’s life one day in February 1933. Zangara fired five shots, and while Roosevelt walked away unscathed, Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, who was accompanying the president, did not.

©

Getty Images

Giuseppe Zangara -

Zangara was arrested immediately, and was sentenced to death after Mayor Cermak died from his injuries. When asked about the assassination attempt, Zangara said, “I like Roosevelt personally, but I don’t like presidents.”

©

Getty Images

Claus von Stauffenberg -

A year before Hitler took his own life, his reign of terror almost ended in a quite different manner. In 1944, a high-ranking SS officer by the name of Claus von Stauffenberg made an attempt on the dictator’s life. Known as the 20 July plot, Stauffenberg placed a suitcase rigged with explosives next to Hitler during an SS meeting and quickly excused himself from the room. But before the bomb detonated, the suitcase was absentmindedly moved behind a table leg by another officer, and the explosion left Hitler with only minor injuries.

©

Getty Images

Claus von Stauffenberg -

Stauffenberg could have changed the course of World War II in those few moments, but unfortunately he and his co-conspirators were rounded up and immediately put to trial. Stauffenberg and other members of the SS who were in on the plot were executed via firing squad.

©

Getty Images

John Hinckley Jr. -

John Hinckley Jr. came from a wealthy family, and remained unemployed for most of his adult life. He instead chose to direct his energy into a delirious obsession with Jodie Foster, who he began stalking after discovering her in the film 'Taxi Driver' (1976).

©

Getty Images

John Hinckley Jr. -

Apparently in an attempt to impress the actress, Hinckley attempted to shoot President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington, D.C. hotel on March 30, 1981, but failed, and was immediately arrested. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, and he spent the next three and a half decades in a hospital. He was released in 2018, and now volunteers at his local church.

Sources: (History) (Britannica) (BBC) (The Washington Post)

See also: History's most notorious assassinations

©

Getty Images