Questions tagged [assassination]
Attempt to murder a person by surprise attack. Usually referred to killing a politician.
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What was the hurry in executing Che Guevera in Bolivia [closed]
It is well known from declassified documents that Che Guevera, after his capture, was executed immediately the day after on October 9, 1967.
What was the hurry in executing him immediately within a ...
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What is the historic validity of "Nothing is real; everything is permitted" as the Assassins' motto?
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted" - I find this phrase, popularized by the game Assassins' Creed, quite confusing even as historic fiction.
Historically, the Hassansins (a.k.a the ...
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Has a food taster ever thwarted an assassination attempt?
Important people have been known to employ food tasters to avoid assassination by poisoning. The linked Wikipedia article mentions that Claudius, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin all ...
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Is Oskar Potiorek considered a suspect in the Archduke Ferdinand assassination? [closed]
I was looking just a tiny bit at the history leading up to the assassination generally blamed for the first World War. The data seem so surprising I just have to ask what I'm missing...
Oskar ...
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Did Hadrian conspire to kill Trajan? [closed]
Some years ago I read a novel trilogy about Trajan's life and in the last book it shows the bad relationship Trajan had with Hadrian, and how Trajan was planning to designate as successor an African ...
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Was ever a poisoning prevented by the person accustoming themselves to poison beforehand (Mithridatism)?
From Wikipedia:
Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word is derived from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, ...
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Did Russian government employ state-sponsored assassins under Russian Empire?
Did Russian government employ state-sponsored assassins under Russian Empire during 1800-1917?
I know, killings of many figures disliked by the Tsar were arranged in the forms of staged duels, but ...
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Was there ever a queen or female ruler who killed her child to preserve her power? [closed]
I vaguely remember hearing about a Queen who had her child killed (or attempted to) so that she could keep the throne. Thanks
To add extra details, I believe it was an infant who would be King once ...
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Why were (are) food tasters human? [closed]
In the TV series The Borgias, there were people who tasted food or drink for others (e.g., the Pope, the Queen, the King) just in case it would be poisoned. Looking this up on Wikipedia, I find that ...
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What were the other steps on the execution checklist during Neptune Spear aka the killing of Bin Laden
According to Wikipedia, capturing Bin Laden was step 7 on the execution checklist - what were the steps before? And were there any afterwards?
The words of the commander on the ground were, "For ...
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How did the world react to Trotsky's assassination?
Exiled former Russian leader Leon Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in August 1940 (with an ice pick) by a Soviet agent in the interest of Trotsky's old rival for power, the then Soviet dictator Stalin. ...
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Did Gavrilo Princip ever express regret for his actions during imprisonment? [closed]
After assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in June 1914; Gavrilo Princip spent just short of 4 years in Prison in Austria-Hungary before dying in April 1918 of tuberculosis. I was ...
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Was Martin Luther King's leadership conference Southern Christian or Southern Baptist?
Most sources refer to the civil rights organization Martin Luther King led as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), but some refer to it as the Southern Baptist Leadership Conference (...
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Has there ever been any assassination so that another assassination could happen during the first one's funeral?
I was reading a review of a book in the article Fascistas catalanes: pocos, pero al abrigo de los poderes (Catalan fascists: few, but with a shelter of the powers) and I found an interesting reference:...
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Did Popes publicly call for any assassinations other than that of Elizabeth I?
According to encyclopedia.com, following on the Protestant Reformation,
In 1580, outraged at the deaths of Catholic missionaries, Pope Gregory XIII made a pronouncement that encouraged Elizabeth's ...
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What did Zhang Zuolin say after his train blew up?
Zhang Zuolin was an early 20th century Chinese warlord of Manchuria. He was fatally wounded by the Japanese Army on June 4, 1928, using a bomb laid beneath tracks where his armoured train travelled ...
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Why does the CIA report on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich refer to it as "Operation Salmon" rather than "Operation Anthropoid"?
SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Source: National Archives
I have been researching Operation Anthropoid (the assassination of SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich on 27 May 1942 in Prague, ...
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Was Heinrich Himmler's death a suicide?
The corpse of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler lying on the floor of British 2nd Army HQ, May 23, 1945. Source: Rare Historical Photos
Background - I'm intrigued by Martin Allen's theory that Himmler ...
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Did emperor Nero have a food taster?
After the Pisonian conspiracy, if would make sense for Nero to have someone test his food for poison before eating it. But I cannot find evidence of food tasters for Roman Emperors.
Any help would be ...
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What were the dates & details of assassinations in Vienna, Austria of Bulgarian defectors Veselin Stoyov, Peter Niezamov, and Ivan Kolev (circa 1974)?
Anna Zechenter of the Institute of National Remembrance in Krakow, Poland has written an article entitled "KGB Poisons" which discloses that the 1974 kidnapping in Denmark of Boris Arsov, a Bulgarian ...
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Why did Stalin and the Soviet leadership have Leon Trotsky assassinated?
Leon Trotsky was killed with a mountaineering ice axe in Mexico. The method of murder chosen was interesting. If he was a political fugitive in far off Mexico, why bother dealing with him? What about ...
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Why was Abane Ramdane killed?
The Wikipedia entry about Abane Ramdane says:
The National Liberation Front (FLN) had killed him because he was
supposedly creating a cult of the individual rather than the
collective ...
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Why was Oslo I Accord so harsh or controversial?
The Oslo I Accord was an attempt in 1993 to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It was the first face-to-face agreement between the ...
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What documented criteria (if any) did the CIA use to determine targets for political assassination during the Cold War?
Did the CIA follow a documented set of criteria when determining targets for political assassination during the Cold War, especially in regards to foreign heads of state or government? There have been ...
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Is there any historical basis for the red/white color scheme of the Assassins?
I recently saw a documentary about the Crusades, and during the scene in which Saladin is almost assassinated by the historical order of Assassins, they are portrayed as wearing plain white clothes ...
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Why did the assasination of Franz Ferdinand trigger WW1? [closed]
I understand that there were also other reasons other than the assassination, but this is widely considered the trigger for WW1. Why? And why did the whole world get involved with this one ...
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Which country in history has had the highest number of presidential assassinations? [closed]
Presidents, kings, emperors, prime ministers, etc.
I'd also be interested to know which country has had the most assassinations in, say, the last 200 years.
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Was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 captured on film?
I have a memory of reading about how Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914 was captured on film and watching it, but for the life of me I cannot find this and am beginning to think I fabricated it.
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Why pretend Elser, Thalmann & other dissidents had been killed in air raids?
Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War, like most other substantial histories of the twilight years of Third Reich, paints a picture of quite startling brutality directed against its own population (...
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Pre-1901/1902 US Presidential Protection
I've spent a little while looking around online about the origins of US Presidential protection - while it has become apparent that the US Secret Service became officially responsible for Presidential ...
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Roman aristocrat with slave assassins named after him?
I remember reading a few years back that there was a particular Roman strongman who had a very intense way of dealing with enemies.
He had dozens of either slaves or former slaves (freedmen), but I ...
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What was the first assassination/murder recorded on film?
Was it the murder of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand?
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Was the Bosnian Crisis the trigger to WWI and not the assassination?
I've read that Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, much to the dismay of the Serbs. Russia backed this action and was promised to have access to the Straits but were later denied. The ...
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Was there an assassination attempt against Xerxes in the battle of Thermopylae?
I watched Frank Miller's 300 last night with my girlfriend, and after the movie ended she mentioned the assassination attempt against Xerxes would have been a great plot element for the movie and that ...
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Timing of Trotsky's Assassination
Stalin's arch rival Trotsky was exiled, but why did Stalin wait until later before sending assassins to finish him off?
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What were the six Mubarak assassination attempts?
Today there's a story about Mubarak in the hospital. He ruled Egypt since 1981 but was overthrown in 2011. Wikipedia says he survived six assassination attempts during that 30-year period, however it ...
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