Unfortunately, news of a murder doesn’t shake us like it once did. However, when a President or a celebrity gets assassinated, it can affect the entire world. Many people remember where they were when John Lennon was killed, or when JFK was shot.
There used to be a time when famous people walked around without having armed security around them at all times. That’s no longer the case. There have been many unfortunate murders that have changed the way governments and celebrities view their security detail. These are those events.
John F Kennedy
John F Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States. He might have the most publicized assassination of anyone on this list, as he was gunned down while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. His killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot him from a window on the sixth floor of the depository building using a rifle.
In a strange turn of events, Oswald would end up being assassinated as well, before he could serve any of his jail time.
Matama Gandhi
Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule. He was considered to be the father of his country. He was assassinated in 1948 while he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting in Delhi.
He was shot down by Nathuram Godse who was a young Hindu fanatic. Godse believed that Gandhi treated Muslims with more respect than Hindus. He shot Gandhi point-blank three times while he was with four other people.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Francis Ferdinand was an Austrian archduke whose assassination was the immediate cause of the first World War. In June of 1914, Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip.
A month later, the First World War began when Austria declared war against Serbia. There had been many tensions between the two countries before the assassination, but the murder was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Martin Luther King Jr
MLK was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.
James Earl Ray was King’s assassin. He was a small-time crook, and shot King from a window of a neighboring rooming house in Memphis. King was standing on the balcony of a motel room. Ray ended up fleeing to Toronto before getting caught in the UK.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States who preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought the emancipation of the slaves. A man named John Wilkes-Booth, a member of one of the most distinguished American acting families of the 19th century, killed Lincoln.
Wilkes-Booth was an advocate for slavery. He walked into the Ford Theatre and shot the President in the back of the head and ended up running away.
William McKinley
McKinley was the 25th President of the United States. Under his leadership, the US went to war against Spain in 1898 and thereby acquired a global empire. While he was meeting some supporters in 1901, an anarchist fired two shots at the President’s chest and abdomen.
He was rushed to the hospital in Buffalo but died a week later. The assassin’s name was Leon Czolgosz and was angered by the disparity between the rich and the poor.
James Garfield
Garfield was the 20th President of the United States who had the second shortest tenure in presidential history. He was shot and incapacitated, which raised serious constitutional concerns about who can perform the duties of the presidency.
After only four months in office, he went to visit his ill wife in New Jersey. Garfield was shot in the back at the railroad station by a disappointed office seeker with messianic visions. He laid in a hospital bed for 80 days and performed only one official act, which was signing an extradition paper.
Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi
Indira Gandhi served as prime minister of India for three consecutive terms, and was in her fourth term when she was assassinated. After she ordered an attack on the Sikh’s holiest shrine (the Golden Temple) which killed 450 people, she was a big target.
She ended up getting assassinated in her garden by her own bodyguards who sought revenge for her attack on the Golden Temple. Her son Rajiv would later become the prime minister of India a few years later and be assassinated as well.
John Lennon
John Lennon needs no introduction. He was a member of the Beatles until 1969 when he left to release an album with his wife Yoko Ono. In 1980, tragedy struck. Just a few weeks after his album Double Fantasy was released, a deranged fan shot him in front of his apartment.
His name was Mark David Chapman, and he was mentally ill and obsessed with Lennon. The assassination has had a profound impact on pop culture as we see it today.
Christina Grimmie
Grimmie became well known in the music industry when she went on the show The Voice in 2014. But, things took a turn for the worst in 2016 when she was gunned down at her own meet-and-greet.
She was signing autographs in Orlando, Florida when she was shot by a 27-year-old after she initially opened her arms to give him a hug. The shooter shot himself before anything else happened. He had an unhealthy infatuation with the singer.
Tupac Shakur
This is probably one of the most notorious assassinations in all of music. Tupac was a rapper who came to embody the gangsta-rap of the 90s. He has sold 75 million albums to date which makes him one of the top-selling artists of all-time.
He was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996 and died six days later. His murder/assassination has yet to be solved. A car pulled up beside Tupac’s and shot 13 bullets into the car, hitting him in the hand, pelvis, and chest.
Notorious B.I.G.
Naturally, we have to talk about the murder of Notorious B.I.G. after Tupac. The two basically go hand-in-hand. He was gunned down a year after Tupac. He had just left a Vibe magazine party in LA and was waiting at a red light when a car pulled up beside him.
A gunman opened fire, and despite Biggie’s bodyguard rushing him to the hospital, it was already too late. His assassination would also go unsolved.
Gianni Versace
Gianni Versace was one of the top fashion designers in the world during the 80s and 90s. He had his Versace fashion empire, which expanded into home furnishings and perfumes.
He was assassinated outside of his South Beach home in Miami in 1997. He was gunned down by a 27-year-old and his body wasn’t found for eight days after. The killer had moved the body to his boathouse which gave him ample time to escape.
Sharon Tate
Sharon was an actress that was married to director Roman Polanski, and would be apart of one of the most iconic assassinations of all time. She was renting a home in Benedict Canyon with her husband when she was murdered in her house. She was eight and a half months pregnant at the time.
She was tortured and killed by a group of people that would later be known as the “Manson family”. They were a murderous cult who was driven to kill by their leader, Charles Manson.
Phil Hartman
Phil Hartman is an Emmy-Award winning actor who is probably best known for his time on Saturday Night Live. He was having some marital problems with his third wife, Brynn Omdahl Hartman. They had been married since 1987, and she reportedly struggled with drug and alcohol abuse.
She fatally shot him in 1998 while he was sleeping in their Encino, California home. She shot herself shortly after, leaving behind a son and a daughter.
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye was a singer, songwriter and record producer. He helped shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s. In 1984, Gaye was in his bedroom when his father shot him in the heart at point-blank range. The two men had been involved in a physical altercation a few minutes before when Gaye intervened in a fight between his parents.
His dad was originally charged with first-degree murder, but it got lessened after they found a brain tumor in his head which could’ve been causing the anger.
Adrienne Shelly
Shelly was an actress, film director, and screenwriter. On November 1st, 2006, she was found dead, hanging in the shower of her Greenwich Village studio apartment. The initial examination of the scene didn’t show anything suspicious, but her husband insisted she wouldn’t take her own life.
They found a footprint from a construction worker who ended up confessing to the assassination. He said he tried to make it look like she killed herself.
Selena
Selena was an award-winning recording artist in the Latino music scene. She went to America to record an English album and hopefully see some worldwide success. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see any of it.
In 1995, she was assassinated by a woman named Yolanda SaldÃvar, who was the founder of the Selena fan club. SaldÃvar was managing Selena’s boutique in San Antonio and was about to be fired for embezzling money.
Medgar Evers
Evers was a civil rights activist who was making a name for himself in the 1950s. He became the first field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, but was assassinated outside of his Mississippi home in 1963.
He was shot in the back just shortly after midnight and died less than an hour after being transported to a nearby hospital. Evers was buried in full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dorothy Stratton
Dorothy Stratton was a Canadian Playboy model and actress that was Playmate of the Year in 1980. She was cast in a movie called They All Laughed and began having an affair with the director. As her fame grew, her husband, Paul Snider, because increasingly jealous.
They separated in 1980, and she went to visit her ex at his house in LA the same year. Snider ended up shooting her in the back of the head before turning the gun on himself.
Jam Master Jay
The accomplished DJ was a member of the iconic rap group Run D.M.C. They were the first rap group to earn mainstream success. In 2002, he was working at his studio in Queens when two men broke into the complex. Jay was shot and killed during the targeted invasion at the age of 37.
The case remains unsolved, and the motives remain unknown. It’s still leaving many in the industry scratching their heads.
Benito Mussolini
After delivering his speech in Rome at the International Congress of Surgeons in 1926, Benito Mussolini walked to his car and failed to notice an unstable Irish woman. She was standing amongst the crowd and was about to kill him. She raised her revolver and pointed it at the head of the dictator.
She missed her target when he turned his head to face the flag and the bullet went through his nose instead of his head. He survived the attack.
Bill Clinton
Another day, another assassination attempt on an American President. Bill Clinton was attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Manila in 1996. He had a terrorist plot against him and his motorcade.
Just a few moments before Clinton was going to leave in that motorcade, one of his secret service agents heard radio chatter that involved mention of some code words referring to a terrorist hit. He directed Clinton a different way, and they ended up finding four explosives on their original motorcade path.
Ahmed Dogan
This was very bold. In 2013, an assassin tried to kill Bulgarian political leader Ahmed Dogan while he was delivering a speech at a party conference at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. This iconic picture was the result.
In a strange turn of events, the gun jammed and failed to shoot off. Dogan would be fine after the man was tackled within seconds of this picture being taken.
Richard Nixon
In February 1974, an unemployed salesman named Samuel Byck attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon by hijacking a commercial jet and fly it into the White House. He shot at a police officer at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, barged into the Atlanta-bound Delta airlines plane, and killed one of the pilots.
He forced one of the passengers to fly the plane to the White House, but was stopped by the barrage of police officers that surrounded the plane. He committed suicide before the police came into the cockpit.
Fidel Castro
It’s very interesting to note that the CIA planned to assassinate Fidel Castro by taking advantage of his love for scuba diving. They planted colorfully-painted mollusk shells that contained explosives in the ocean while the Cuban dictator was underwater.
The plan obviously didn’t work, and Castro survived the attempt. The CIA also hired some men from the mafia to go into Cuba and kill Castro. The mobsters would deliver a poison pill to Castro which would end his life. It failed.
Ronald Reagan
As Ronald Reagan was about to leave the Hilton after delivering a speech, a deranged man shot six shots from a revolver at him. One of the bullets punctured his lung. The man’s name was John Hinckley, and he was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster and believed that killing the president was the best way to impress her.
I don’t think any girl has “presidential assassination” in their list of things they look for in a guy.
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II was about to give his speech at St. Peter’s Square on May 13th, 1981, when a Turkish gunman shot at him. The man claimed that the Pope was the ultimate symbol of capitalism. He fired his shots while the Pope was walking through the crowd.
The Pope was rushed to Gemelli Hospital and fortunately survived. You’ll now see the Pope in a box of bullet proof glass when he is in a public setting.
Vladimir Lenin
After delivering a speech on August 30th, 1918, in a Moscow factory, Soviet socialist leader Vladimir Lenin was shot three times by a member of a different political party. His shoulder and jaw were hit but he survived the attack despite the serious wounds.
The assassination attempt kindled a wave of reprisals by Bolsheviks against the Social Revolutionaries. Lenin was a strong voice that fought for worker’s rights in a capitalist system.
Adolf Hilter
Unsurprisingly, there was an attempt to assassinate Hitler. On March 11th, 1944, Cavalry Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch attempted to kill Hitler as he concealed a small Browning pistol. The captain felt that the destruction of Germany was already inevitable and that the German leader had to be stopped.
As he entered the conference room to kill Hitler, Field Marshal Ernst Busch stopped him without suspecting anything, but it ended up disrupting the timing and Hitler ended up leaving.
