The history of political assassinations: mysterious politicians’ assassination attempts

The topic of political assassinations has always excited society. An inquisitive reader can easily find information about the most high-profile cases of past centuries. But almost all the most high-profile political murders are very similar to each other. Someone was stabbed to death with cold weapons, like Caesar or Henry IV of Navarre.

Some have been shot, like William the Silent, Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy. A little less often someone was poisoned, but these were quite “typical” murders. They are talked about because of the scale of the political figures whose lives they claimed, but in themselves these acts did not shine with originality. However, history knows several examples of political assassinations that stand out from the crowd. Let's talk about them.

• Emperor Commodus

  Date of murder - December 31, 192

  And moviegoers immediately remembered Ridley Scott's film "Gladiator", where the role of this Roman sovereign was played by Joaquin Phoenix. It may seem surprising, but the real Commodus was almost stranger than his theatrical counterpart. Having reigned for only six years, he was not marked by any great achievements, but was known for his morbid megalomania, sometimes taking on the form of paranoia.

  He considered himself the son of the god Jupiter and a new incarnation of Hercules, erected statues in his honor throughout Rome, portraying him as an ancient hero. When a terrible fire broke out in Rome in 191, Commodus was not particularly worried. On the contrary, he declared himself a new Romulus, who would create a new Rome on the ruins of the old one.

  And then he began to rename everything. Henceforth, the full name of the Roman Senate sounded like "Happy Commodian Senate." The legions were renamed "commodians" and the navy was similarly renamed. Even Roman citizens have now become "Commodians". Commodus placed himself in the center of the universe, as if emphasizing his divine origin.

  Not satisfied with this, in 192 Commodus rolled up large-scale games in which he himself participated as a gladiator. It should be noted that the ancient Romans considered participation in games a contemptible craft, the lot of slaves. The emperor, who wished to become a gladiator, destroyed the centuries-old foundations and brought disgrace to the very title of the Roman sovereign.

  But Commodus did not just want to fight in the arena, he wanted to win - how else, because he was the new Hercules and the new Romulus! The son of Jupiter cannot lose to a slave or fall under the blow of a lion's paw. Therefore, all the battles of Commodus were dummy, and he dealt with predatory animals, standing at a safe distance and throwing spears at them.

  In this atmosphere of madness, a conspiracy was hatched against Commodus. At first they tried to poison him, but the emperor simply vomited poisoned food. And then the conspirators persuaded one of the gladiators, named Narcissus, who was Commodus's constant training partner, to strangle him right in the gladiatorial barracks. In order for the kind reader to understand how inglorious the end was, let him imagine that, for example, the President of some of the world’s leading countries was found strangled in one of the rooms of a cheap brothel. That would be a scandal!

• Georgy Ivanov Markov

  Date of murder - September 11, 1978

  Georgy Markov was a popular writer and journalist in socialist Bulgaria, he was a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, but at some point he probably felt untouchable and began to actively criticize the communist government in Bulgaria. For the time being, they shut their eyes on this, but after the Prague Spring of 1968, Bulgaria began to treat political journalists much more strictly and allow them less. They stopped putting up with Markov's writings. And he fled to the UK, married an Englishwoman and got a job at the BBC.

  At home, he was soon expelled from the Writers' Union, and then his books began to be withdrawn from libraries. Markov himself, however, was not touched for a long time. Until the fall of 1978. On September 7, Georgy Markov, as usual, left work and went to the parking lot, where he left the car. Along the way he, as usual, passed by a bus stop, where people traditionally gathered. Suddenly he stumbled over someone's umbrella and felt a shot.

  The man with the umbrella quickly excused himself and left on the first bus. It seemed like a simple misunderstanding. Markov returned home as if nothing had happened and went to bed. But the next day he felt very unwell, he had a fever, attacks of nausea rolled up.

  The fugitive journalist was hospitalized, but they could not save him: after spending several days, Georgy Markov died in the hospital on September 11, 1978. And although nothing has been officially proven, his death is usually associated with the activities of the Bulgarian KGB. Apparently, the Bulgarian "James Bonds" were inspired by the classic spy movies.

• King Edward II

  Date of murder - September 21, 1327

  It seems that Edward II was not lucky from birth, for he was the son of one of the greatest English kings - Edward I Long-legged. Having inherited neither the organizational nor military talents of his father, Edward II could not boast of any serious success during the more than 17 years he spent on the English throne.

  He was always compared to his late father, and the comparison was always not in favor of the new king. In addition, there were rumors throughout the kingdom that Edward was a homosexual. In favor of this was the fact that he incredibly promoted his close friend Piers Gaveston.

  As a result, the barons rebelled, captured and executed Gaveston. This became the prologue for a long confrontation between the king and his vassals. At some point, his wife, the Frenchwoman Isabella, spoke out against Edward. While the king was sorting things out with his courtiers, a famine broke out in the country, which only increased widespread dissatisfaction with Edward's rule.

  In 1326, an open rebellion broke out against the king, to which his wife joined. Edward fled, but was captured and, under pressure, renounced the crown in favor of 14-year-old son Edward III. However, the abdicated king still had a number of supporters, so in September 1327 he was put to death at Berkeley Castle.

  Various rumors circulated about his death. Someone even claimed that Edward managed to escape and lived under another name in another country for several more years. Someone said that the king felt bad in the evening and died. However, there is another version that is truly worthy of the darkest thriller.

  Some medieval chroniclers wrote that Edward was killed in an extremely cruel way. Allegedly, the executioners heated a metal rod and introduced it into the anus of the former king. Naturally, this guaranteed death in terrible agony, but at the same time, such an execution did not leave traces of violence visible to the eye on the body of the king, so his death could well be attributed to natural causes and they could even present the corpse.

• Jimmy Hoffa

  Date of disappearance - July 30, 1975

  James Riddle Hoffa was an American trade union leader and served as president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers. Hoffa is a highly controversial figure in the history of the American labor movement. On the one hand, he was an outstanding trade union leader, under whom the trade unions became a real force that even politicians had to reckon with.

  However, at the same time, Hoffa, from the very beginning of his work in the trade union movement, used his influence for various dirty deeds. He was repeatedly suspected of bribing jurors and having connections with the mafia. In 1967, Hoffa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for bribing officials, but already in 1971 he was free, largely due to the intervention of President Richard Nixon.

  He wanted to win over the drivers' union, which had previously traditionally supported candidates from the Democratic Party, while Nixon was a Republican. And at first everything was fine, but Hoffa intended to become the president of the union again and gradually began to oppose Nixon.

  However, Hoffa now had enough enemies within the union as well. One of them was his former comrade and accomplice Anthony Provenzano, the leader of the New Jersey drivers union and not the last person in the New York mafia "family" Genovese. It was Provenzano who was strongly opposed to Hoffa getting involved in trade union affairs again, since this was not beneficial either to him or to the people from New York. Hoffa was on his way to meet Provenzano on July 30, 1975, the day he disappeared.

  The meeting was to take place at a well-known restaurant in the suburbs of Detroit in the middle of the day. At about half past two, exasperated Hoffa called home from a public phone next to the restaurant, told his wife that the people he had an appointment with were running late, and told her to cook a steak for dinner, as it seemed he will not be able to dine normally.

  The street was quite crowded, a couple of passers-by even recognized Hoffa and came up to greet him and exchange a few words. Many of the witnesses subsequently called to testify reported seeing Jimmy Hoffa pacing up and down outside the restaurant. Between half past two and three o'clock, Hoffa disappeared.

  No one knew where he had gone, and only one witness reported seeing Hoffa get into the back seat of a maroon Lincoln. He never came home, neither that evening nor the next day. No one else saw Jimmy Hoffa, ever. A few years later, the police recognize him as dead, but the body was never found. The man simply disappeared without a trace from a busy street in the middle of the day.

• Alexander Hamilton

  Date of death - July 11, 1804

  The death of Alexander Hamilton was the result of perhaps one of the most famous political duels. Since both participants were politicians, hated each other and deliberately went to the death duel, Hamilton's death can be safely attributed to political assassinations.

  Alexander Hamilton and his would-be assassin Aaron Burr first came into conflict during the 1800 US presidential election. Burr was then running for president and, along with fellow candidate Thomas Jefferson, received the same number of electoral votes.

  According to the rules, in case of such an outcome, the vote should have been moved to the House of Representatives, where not many people sympathized with Jefferson, and Burr had a serious chance of winning. Hamilton, who was Jefferson's long-time rival, still did not want Burr's election, so he made every effort to ensure that during the next round of voting, victory was given to the first. Burr took over as vice president.

  Subsequently, a real "correspondence war" broke out between Hamilton and Burr, which eventually led to a real challenge to a duel. The duel took place in the early morning of July 11, 1804 in a quiet place in the state of New Jersey. Both men fired, but Hamilton's bullet passed over Burr's head, while he shot his opponent in the lower abdomen over the right thigh. Hamilton dropped his pistol and fell to the ground, almost immediately losing consciousness. Mortally wounded, he was taken to New York, where he received the last communion from the priest and died.

  Although Aaron Burr emerged victorious from the bout, the fatal duel effectively ended his political career. He even had to flee to the state of Georgia for some time, since murder charges were brought against him in New York and New Jersey, which, however, were soon dropped.

  And with all this, he still held the position of Vice President of the United States. Just imagine the picture: the fugitive vice president is hiding on the southern plantations from criminal prosecution! And more interestingly, Burr eventually even returned to Washington and remained in the position of vice president until the end of his term. According to contemporaries, his farewell speech in office brought tears to some eyewitnesses.

• Grigory Rasputin

  Date of death - December 30, 1916

  And this is a small bonus, since in reality the death of Rasputin was much more prosaic than the rumor claimed. Even today, in some popular science publications, you can find a story about how Rasputin allegedly first tried to feed poisoned cakes, but he, having accustomed himself to poisons from his youth, calmly ate them. Then they allegedly tried to shoot him, chopped them with sabers and drowned him in the ice hole, and only then this bearded "terminator" died. In reality, it was not so.

  It was the Duke Felix Yusupov, one of the richest people in the Russian Empire, and the leader of the right-wing nationalists, Vladimir Purishkevich, who planned to kill Rasputin. They believed that the "old man", who was extremely close to the empress and a member of the royal family, had a pernicious influence on the policy of the state.

  The plan was allegedly to lure Rasputin to the Yusupov estate on a far-fetched pretext and kill him there. There are several oddities in the popular version of Rasputin's death. Firstly, according to people who knew the "old man" well, he did not eat sweets at all, believing that it supposedly harmed his "special abilities."

  So it’s unlikely that he ate the poisoned cakes at Yusupov’s reception, even if they really were offered to him. Guards questioned during the murder investigation said they heard four shots in a row. The pathologist determined that the cause of death was a shot to the stomach, which caused severe blood loss. Rasputin was thrown into the ice hole already dead - this was evidenced by the absence of water in his lungs. Apparently, there was no feast at all. Rasputin was simply shot at point-blank range as soon as he entered the Yusupov estate, and then the corpse was thrown into the water.

  Despite the fact that the names of the killers were known to everyone and the Empress demanded that they all be shot, the news of Rasputin's death caused a wave of rejoicing both in society and in the army. Felix Yusupov and all those involved in the events of December 30 became extremely popular people. Already after the February coup and the abdication of Nicholas II, Felix Yusupov was even offered to become the new emperor. After October 1917, the prince left Russia and remained in exile until his death in 1967 at the age of 80.