List of assassinations and assassination attempts
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- Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.
The following is a list of some of the most famous assassinations and assassination attempts. It is not intended to be exhaustive.
| Assassin | Year (AD format) | Target | Result | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jing Ke | 210 BC | Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang | Survived | One of the earliest documented attempts. |
| Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and others | 44 BC | Roman Dictator Julius Caesar | Killed | Resulted in Civil War and indirectly to the end of the Roman Republic |
| Balthasar Gérard | 1584 | Dutch Stadtholder William the Silent | Killed | The first assassination carried out with a firearm. |
| Guy Fawkes | 1605 | King James I of England, Parliament of England | Survived | See the Gunpowder Plot. |
| François Ravaillac | 1610 | King Henri IV of France | Killed | Religious murder. |
| Charlotte Corday | 1793 | French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat | Killed | Later often seen as a patriotic act. |
| John Bellingham | 1812 | UK Prime Minister Spencer Perceval | Killed | First and only U.K. Prime Minister to be assassinated. |
| John Wilkes Booth | 1865 | US President Abraham Lincoln | Killed | |
| Charles J. Guiteau | 1881 | US President James Garfield | Killed | Died 80 days following the shooting. |
| Ignacy Hryniewiecki | 1881 | Tsar Alexander II of Russia | Killed | Assassination plot concluded with bombs. |
| Frederick Russell Burnham | 1896 | Mlimo, the Ndebele religious leader | Killed | Effectively ended the Second Matabele War. |
| Gaetano Bresci | 1900 | King Umberto I of Italy | Killed | |
| Leon Czolgosz | 1901 | US President William McKinley | Killed | |
| Alexandros Schinas | 1913 | King George I of Greece | Killed | Possible conspiracy. |
| Gavrilo Princip | 1914 | Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand | Killed | Considered the start of World War I. |
| Raoul Villain | 1914 | French socialist leader Jean Jaurès | Killed | The assassin was tried and acquitted in 1919. |
| Fritz Joubert Duquesne | 1916 | Lord Kitchener, British Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War | Killed | Killed on the HMS Hampshire by an act of sabotage. |
| Unknown | 1922 | Michael Collins | Killed | Killed in an ambush firefight near the end of Irish Civil War |
| Eligiusz Niewiadomski | 1922 | First Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz | Killed | Killed five days after his inauguration, while attending the opening of an art exhibit at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. |
| Vlado Chernozemski | 1934 | Alexander I of Yugoslavia | Killed | Killed in Marseille during a state visit. |
| Claus von Stauffenberg | 1944 | German dictator Adolf Hitler | Survived | See the July 20 plot. |
| Nathuram Godse | 1948 | Political and Spiritual Leader Mahatma Gandhi | Killed | |
| Talduwe Somarama | 1959 | Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Solomon Bandaranaike | Killed | Assassinated by a Buddhist monk as part of a conspiracy. |
| Jean Bastien-Thiry and the OAS | 1962 | French President Charles de Gaulle | Survived | |
| Nguyen Van Cu and Pham Phu Quoc | 1962 | President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem | Survived | See 1962 South Vietnamese Presidential Palace bombing |
| Lee Harvey Oswald | 1963 | US President John F. Kennedy | Killed | Official reports have concluded that Oswald acted alone, however significant doubts remain for many. |
| Jack Ruby | 1963 | Lee Harvey Oswald | Killed | |
| Norman 3X Butler, Thomas 15X Johnson, Talmadge Hayer | 1965 | Activist Malcolm X | Killed | Tensions and departure from the Nation of Islam |
| James Earl Ray / Loyd Jowers |
1968 | Political activist Martin Luther King | Killed | Ray was convicted on a guilty plea but later recanted, while a 1999 civil trial convicted Jowers and 'unknown others', while also noting that 'governmental agencies were parties' to the plot. |
| Sirhan Sirhan | 1968 | US Senator Robert F. Kennedy | Killed | |
| Prince Faisal bin Musa'id | 1975 | Saudi King Faisal | Killed | |
| Dan White | 1978 | San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk | Killed | Killed over not reappointing Dan White supervisor |
| Kim Jae-kyu | 1979 | South Korean President Park Chung-hee | Killed | See Park Chung-hee assassination |
| Mark David Chapman | 1980 | John Lennon | Killed | An act to become famous. |
| John Hinckley, Jr. | 1981 | US President Ronald Reagan | Survived | To impress actress Jodie Foster. |
| Khalid Islambouli | 1981 | Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat | Killed | Rare attack carried out by a group. |
| Mehmet Ali Ağca | 1981 | Catholic Pope John Paul II | Survived | |
| Group of army officers | 1981 | Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman | Killed | Plotted by a faction of officers of Bangladesh Army led by General Abul Monjur. |
| Satwant Singh and Beant Singh | 1984 | Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi | Killed | Assassinated by personal bodyguards. |
| Provisional Irish Republican Army | 1984 | British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher | Survived | Detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton. |
| Unknown | 1986 | Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme | Killed | Killed by a handgun on his way home from a cinema on a street in central Stockholm. |
| Thenmuli Rajaratnam | 1991 | Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi | Killed | Killed in an explosion triggered by a LTTE suicide bomber. |
| Janusz Walus | 1993 | South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani | Killed | Anti-Communist killing |
| Unknown | 1993 | Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa | Killed | Attack carried out by an LTTE suicide bomber on May Day parade. |
| Yigal Amir | 1995 | Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin | Killed | Attack carried out by Israeli opposed to Oslo Accords. |
| Dipendra | 2001 | King Birendra of Nepal | Killed | See Nepalese royal massacre. |
| Volkert van der Graaf | 2002 | Dutch Election Candidate Pim Fortuyn | Killed | The attack took place in a parking lot outside a radio studio in Hilversum, where Fortuyn had just given an interview. |
| Maxime Brunerie | 2002 | French President Jacques Chirac | Survived | Attempted to shoot the President during the Bastille Day Military Parade. |
| Zvezdan Jovanović | 2003 | Serbian Prime Ministar Zoran Đinđić | Killed | Killed his victim with a sniper rife (a relatively rare type of assassination, see there), suspected to have acted for organized crime backers. |
| Unknown though widely believed to be Syrian intelligence | 2005 | Former Lebanese Prime Minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri | Killed | The assassination is done via car bomb in Beirut. |
| Unknown | 2007 | Benazir Bhutto | Killed | Killed while entering a vehicle upon leaving a political rally for the Pakistan People's Party in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. |
