Items11The creator’s order
  1. 1Philip II of MacedonPhilip II of MacedonIn October 336 BC, King Philip II of Macedon was assassinated during a royal wedding at Aegae by his bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis. The murder immediately elevated his twenty-year-old son, Alexander III, to the Macedonian throne. Rather than fracturing the northern kingdom as neighboring rivals…0
  2. 2Julius CaesarJulius CaesarOn March 15, 44 BC, a conspiracy of Roman senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus stabbed dictator Gaius Julius Caesar twenty-three times in the Curia of Pompey. The conspirators believed that eliminating one autocrat would instantly revive the centuries-old Roman Republic.…0
  3. 3Thomas BecketThomas BecketOn December 29, 1170, four Anglo-Norman knights murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket inside Canterbury Cathedral following his prolonged dispute with King Henry II over royal authority and ecclesiastical independence. The killing in a sacred sanctuary horrified medieval Christendom, turning popular…0
  4. 4Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnBorn Feb 12, 1809On the evening of April 14, 1865, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., just days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Lincoln's death shattered any hope for a steady, executive-led reconciliation of the American…0
  5. 5Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of RussiaBorn Apr 29, 1818On March 13, 1881, members of the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya, led by bomb thrower Ignacy Hryniewiecki, killed Tsar Alexander II along Saint Petersburg's Catherine Canal. The attack occurred on the very morning the tsar had approved the Loris-Melikov constitutional proposal, a major opening…0
  6. 6Archduke Franz Ferdinand of AustriaArchduke Franz Ferdinand of AustriaBorn Dec 18, 1863On June 28, 1914, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, along with his wife Sophie in Sarajevo. Backed by the Serbian nationalist society known as the Black Hand, Princip intended to liberate South Slavs from Habsburg rule. Instead,…0
  7. 7Mahatma GandhiMahatma GandhiBorn Oct 2, 1869On January 30, 1948, Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse shot Mahatma Gandhi at point-blank range during an evening prayer meeting in New Delhi. Godse believed Gandhi had weakened the nation through his insistence on nonviolence and minority protection following Partition. Instead of rallying militant…0
  8. 8Patrice LumumbaPatrice LumumbaBorn Jul 2, 1925On January 17, 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was executed in Katanga by a firing squad following a coup aided by Belgian and American intelligence. Lumumba had championed genuine economic sovereignty and pan-African…0
  9. 9Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr.Born Jan 15, 1929On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. King had been organizing the Poor People's Campaign and supporting striking sanitation workers. His murder ignited uprisings across more than one hundred…0
  10. 10Anwar SadatAnwar SadatBorn Dec 25, 1918On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was gunned down by Islamic Jihad conspirators disguised as soldiers during the annual Victory Day parade in Cairo. Sadat had radically transformed Middle Eastern diplomacy by visiting Jerusalem and signing the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty,…0