The John Lennon Assassination Video

                                                                      

John Lennon was one of the founding members of The Beatles, who had gone on to have worldwide success as a member of the band, and also as a peace activist. On December 8th 1980, Lennon was in New York City. As he was returning to his hotel that evening a man shouted his name. As Lennon turned around, the man shot Lennon four times. Lennon then stumbled into the hotel and collapsed. While this was taking place, the assassin Mark David Chapman dropped his weapon and sat on the street, waiting to be arrested. He was charged with murder and remains in prison to this day. His motivation for the murder is unclear.

The Assassination of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, also known as Malcolm Little was an American black Muslim minister. He is often seen as the man behind the Black Power movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s in which African Americans radicalised and became driven toward freedom and towards gaining the respect of their fellow Americans. Malcolm had previously been a member of the Nation of Islam, however, he had become a Sunni Muslim. Apparently, following this, the Nation of Islam had given orders for the assassination of Malcolm X. On February 21st 1965, Malcolm had begun giving a speech when a man rushed through the crowd and shot Malcolm X with a sawn-off shotgun. Two other men joined in and Malcolm was shot a total of 16 times. The three men who killed Malcolm X were all members of the Nation of Islam. Despite often being labelled as a cold-hearted radical and a menace, the world was sympathetic towards Malcolm following his assassination. Malcolm X died aged 39.

They Killed Him - A Song About Assassinations

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Pt 1


The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Pt 2



The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Pt 3



The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Pt 4



The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Pt 5


President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas. He was shot twice, in the neck and head, and was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. Lee Harvey Oswald, the principal suspect, was arrested at a movie theater at about 1:50 p.m. He denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy, and was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24, before he could be indicted or tried. Jack Ruby was then arrested and convicted of murder. He successfully appealed his conviction and death sentence but he got ill and died as a date for his new trial was being set.

President Johnson created the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination. It concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but this remains disputed by some scholars, eyewitnesses, and the 1979 findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Conspiracy theories about the assassination and supposed cover-up continue to circulate.

The Assassination of Ninoy Aquino

On August 21, 1983, while on his way to Manila, Aquino was accompanied by several foreign journalists to ensure his safety or, at the very least, to record events for posterity in case rumors of a planned assassination proved to be true on China Airlines Flight 811. Despite a convoy of security guards (all assigned to him by the Marcos government) and a contingent of 2,000 military and police personnel on the tarmac, Aquino was fatally shot in the head as he was escorted off the airplane. Government investigators claimed that he was gunned down by Rolando Galman, who was immediately shot dead by the aviation security. No one actually identified who pulled the trigger, but Rebecca Quijano, another passenger, testified that she saw a man behind Aquino (on the stairs) point a gun at the back of his head, then there was the sound of a gunshot. A post-mortem analysis disclosed that Aquino was shot in the back of the head at close range with the bullet exiting at the chin at an angle which supported Quijano's testimony. Even more suspicions were aroused when Quijano described the assassin as wearing a military uniform.

The government claimed that Aquino was killed by a Communist hitman. However, politicians and diplomats found evident contradictions between the claim and the photos and the videotape footage that documented the time before and after the shooting. The footage had circulated throughout the Philippines at that time.

Aquino's funeral procession on August 31 lasted from 9 a.m.--with a funeral mass officiated by the Catholic archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and held at Santo Domingo Church--to 9 p.m., when his body was interred at the Manila Memorial Park. Two million people lined the streets during the procession which was aired by the Church-sponsored Radio Veritas, the only station that covered the procession. The procession reached Rizal Park, where the Philippine flag was brought to half-staff.

The Assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said of Mountbatten's death:

The IRA gave clear reasons for the execution. I think it is unfortunate that anyone has to be killed, but the furor created by Mountbatten's death showed up the hypocritical attitude of the media establishment. As a member of the House of Lords, Mountbatten was an emotional figure in both British and Irish politics. What the IRA did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people; and with his war record I don't think he could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war situation. He knew the danger involved in coming to this country. In my opinion, the IRA achieved its objective: people started paying attention to what was happening in Ireland.

On the same day Mountbatten was assassinated, the IRA also ambushed and killed eighteen British Army soldiers, sixteen of them from the Parachute Regiment at Warrenpoint, County Down in what became known as the Warrenpoint ambush. After this action, graffiti proclaiming "Bloody Sunday's Not Forgotten, We Got Eighteen And Mountbatten" was seen in some Republican areas in Ireland.

On 23 November 1979, Thomas McMahon was convicted of murder for his part in the bombing and later was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

On June 4, 1968, Kennedy scored a major victory when he won the California primary. He addressed his supporters in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968 in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He left the ballroom through a service area to greet supporters working in the hotel's kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver and shot Kennedy in the head at close range. Following the shooting, Kennedy was rushed to The Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning.

His body was returned to New York City, where he lay in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral for several days before the funeral Mass held there. His brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, eulogized him with the words, "My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

Senator Kennedy concluded his eulogy, paraphrasing his deceased brother Robert by quoting George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"

Immediately following the Mass, Kennedy's body was transported by special train to Washington, D.C. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations, paying their respects as the train passed by.

Kennedy was buried near his brother, John, in Arlington National Cemetery. He had always maintained that he wished to be buried in Massachusetts, but his family believed that, since the brothers had been so close in life, they should be near each other in death. In accordance with his wishes, Kennedy was buried with the bare minimum military escort and ceremony. Robert Kennedy's burial at Arlington National Cemetery was the only one to ever take place at night. Coordinates: 38°52′52″N 77°04′17″W / 38.88118, -77.0715

After the assassination, the mandate of the Secret Service was altered to include protection of presidential candidates

The Assassination of Martin Luther King

King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, owned by black businessman Walter Bailey (and named for his wife). King's close friend and colleague, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy Suite."

According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's last words were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was going to attend: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony, King was struck by a single bullet fired from a rifle. The bullet travelled through his right cheek, smashing his jaw and then going down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.

King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed manual heart massage. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60 year old man.

Two months after King's death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom for Angola, Rhodesia, or South Africa on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder, confessing to the assassination on March 10, 1969 (although he recanted this confession three days later).

On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

Ray fired Foreman as his attorney (from then on derisively calling him "Percy Fourflusher") claiming that a man he met in Montreal, Canada with the alias "Raoul" was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself, further asserting that although he did not "personally shoot King," he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.

Ray and seven other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee on June 10, 1977. They were recaptured on June 13, three days later, and returned to prison. One more year was added to his previous sentence to total 100 years. Shortly after, Ray testified that he did not shoot King to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The Assassination of Huey Long

In July 1935, two months prior to his death, Long claimed that he had uncovered a plot to assassinate him, which had been discussed in a meeting at New Orleanss DeSoto Hotel. According to Long, four U.S. representatives, Mayor Walmsley, and former governors Parker and Sanders had been present. Long read what he claimed was a transcript of a recording of this meeting on the floor of the Senate.

Long called for a third special session of the Louisiana State Legislature to begin in September 1935, and he traveled from Washington to Baton Rouge to oversee its progress. Although accounts of the September 8, 1935 murder differ, most believe that Long was shot once or twice by medical doctor Carl Austin Weiss in the Capitol building at Baton Rouge. Weiss was immediately shot sixty-one times by Long's bodyguards and police on the scene. The 28-year-old Dr. Weiss was the son-in-law of Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy. According to Mrs. Ida Catherine Pavy Boudreaux of Opelousas, Pavy's only surviving child, her father had been gerrymandered out of his Sixteenth Judicial District because of his opposition to Long.

Shortly after being shot, the expiring Long reportedly said, "I wonder why he shot me." Long died two days later of internal bleeding, following Dr. Arthur Vidrine's attempt to close the wounds.

An alternative theory suggests that Weiss was unarmed and had punched Long, not shot him. Instead, Senator Long was struck by a stray bullet from his bodyguards, who shot Weiss because they mistakenly believed that Weiss was going to shoot Long. Former Louisiana state police superintendent Francis Grevemberg supports this view of the shooting.

The Attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan

The Reagan assassination attempt occurred on March 30, 1981, just 69 days into the presidency of Ronald Reagan. While leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley. Reagan suffered a punctured lung, but prompt medical attention allowed him to recover quickly despite his age. No formal invocation of presidential succession took place, although a controversial statement by Secretary of State Alexander Haig that he was "in control here" marked a short period during which Vice President George H. W. Bush was physically absent, flying back to Washington, D.C. aboard Air Force Two. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained confined to a psychiatric facility.

The Attempted Assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt

February 15, 1933 (one month before being sworn in for his first term in office): In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt. Four people were wounded and Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was killed. Zangara was found guilty of murder and was executed March 20, 1933. Some researchers believe Cermak, not Roosevelt, was the intended target that day, as the mayor was a staunch foe of Al Capone's Chicago mob organization.

The Assassination of William McKinley

The William McKinley assassination occurred on September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. United States President William McKinley, attending the Pan-American Exposition, was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. McKinley initially appeared to be recovering from his wounds, but took a turn for the worse six days after the shooting and died on September 14, 1901.

The Assassination of James Garfield

The James A. Garfield assassination took place in Washington, DC on July 2, 1881. President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at 9:30 a.m., less than four months after taking office as the twentieth President of the United States. Garfield died eleven weeks later on September 19, 1881, the second of four Presidents to be assassinated.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Originally, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, had formulated a plan to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners. After attending an April 11 speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, an incensed Booth changed his plans and determined to assassinate the president. Learning that the President and First Lady would be attending Ford's Theatre, he laid his plans, assigning his co-conspirators to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

Without his main bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, to whom he related his famous dream regarding his own assassination, Lincoln left to attend the play Our American Cousin on April 14, 1865. As a lone bodyguard wandered, and Lincoln sat in his state box (Box 7) in the balcony, Booth crept up behind the President and waited for what he thought would be the funniest line of the play ("You sock-dologizing old man-trap"), hoping the laughter would muffle the noise of the gunshot. When the laughter began, Booth jumped into the box and aimed a single-shot, round-slug 0.44 caliber Henry Deringer at his head, firing at point-blank range. Major Henry Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth but was cut by Booth's knife. Booth then leapt to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin: Thus always to tyrants) and escaped, despite a broken leg suffered in the leap. A twelve-day manhunt ensued, in which Booth was chased by Federal agents (under the direction of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton). He was eventually cornered in a Virginia barn house and shot, dying of his wounds soon after.

Lincoln's funeral train carried his remains, as well as 300 mourners and the casket of his son, William, 1,654 miles (2,661 km) to IllinoisAn army surgeon, Doctor Charles Leale, initially assessed Lincoln's wound as mortal. The President was taken across the street from the theater to the Petersen House, where he lay in a coma for nine hours before dying. Several physicians attended Lincoln, including U.S. Army Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes of the Army Medical Museum. Using a probe, Barnes located some fragments of Lincoln's skull and the ball lodged 6 inches (15 cm) inside his brain. Lincoln never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 7:22:10 a.m. April 15, 1865. There is some disagreement among historians as to Stanton's words after Lincoln died. All agree that he began "Now he belongs to the..." with some stating he said "ages" while others believe he said "angels." After Lincoln's body was returned to the White House, a brain-only autopsy was performed, and his body was prepared for his lying in repose in the East Room. He was the first president to be assassinated or to lie in state.

The Attempted Assassination of Andrew Jackson

On January 30, 1835, what is believed to be the first attempt to kill a sitting President of the United States occurred just outside the United States Capitol Building. When Jackson was leaving the Capitol Building out of the East Portico after the funeral of South Carolina Representative Warren R. Davis, Richard Lawrence, an unemployed and deranged house-painter from England, either burst from a crowd or stepped out from hiding behind a column and aimed a pistol at Jackson which misfired. Lawrence then pulled out a second pistol which also misfired. It has since been postulated that the moisture from the humid weather of the day contributed to the double misfiring. Lawrence was then restrained, with legend saying that Jackson attacked Lawrence with his cane, prompting his aides to restrain him. Others present, including David Crockett, restrained and disarmed Lawrence.

Richard Lawrence gave the doctors several reasons for the shooting. He had recently lost his job painting houses and somehow blamed Jackson. He claimed that with the President dead, "money would be more plenty"—a reference to Jacksons struggle with the Bank of the United States—and that he "could not rise until the President fell." Finally, he informed his interrogators that he was actually a deposed English King—Richard III, specifically, dead since 1485—and that Jackson was merely his clerk. He was deemed insane, institutionalized, and never punished for his assassination attempt.

The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

On 4 November 1995 Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords and believed he was saving the country from a dire fate. The shooting took place in the evening as Rabin was leaving a mass rally in Tel Aviv in support of the Oslo process. Rabin was rushed to the nearby Ichilov Hospital, where he died on the operating table of blood loss and a punctured lung.

The Assassination of Anwar El Sadat

On 6 October 1981, the month after the crackdown, Sadat was assassinated during the annual victory parade in Cairo. A fatwā approving the assassination had been obtained from Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the U.S. for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Sadat was protected by four layers of security and the army parade should have been safe due to ammunition-seizure rules. However, the officers in charge of that procedure were on hajj to Mecca.

As air force Mirage jets flew overhead, distracting the crowd, a troop truck halted before the presidential reviewing stand, and a lieutenant strode forward. Sadat stood to receive his salute, whereupon the assassins rose from the truck, throwing grenades and firing assault rifle rounds. The attack lasted about two minutes. Photographer Bill Foley captured one of the last shots of a living Sadat. The photograph is titled "The Last Smile." The lead assassin Khalid Islambouli shouted "Death to Pharaoh!" as he ran towards the stand and shot Sadat. After he fell to the floor people around Sadat threw chairs on his body to try to protect him from the bullets. Eleven others were killed, including the Cuban ambassador a Omani general and a Coptic Orthodox bishop, and 28 were wounded, including James Tully, the Irish Minister for Defence, and four U.S. military liaison officers. Sadat was then rushed to a hospital, but was declared dead within hours. This was the first time in Egyptian history that the head of state had been assassinated by an Egyptian citizen. Two of the attackers were killed and the others were arrested by military police on-site. Islambouli was later found guilty and was executed in April 1982.

In conjunction with the assassination, an insurrection was organized in Asyut in Upper Egypt. Rebels took control of the city for a few days and 68 policemen and soldiers were killed in the fighting. Government control was not restored until paratroopers from Cairo arrived. Most of the militants convicted of fighting received light sentences and served only three years in prison.

The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi's last public meeting was at Sriperumbudur on 21 May 1991, in a village approximately 30-miles from Madras, Tamil Nadu, where he was assassinated while campaigning for the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha Congress candidate. The assassination was carried out by the LTTE suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam also known as Gayatri and Dhanu.

At 10:10 p.m., the assassin Dhanu approached him in a public meeting and greeted the former Prime Minister. She then bent down to touch his feet (an expression of respect among Hindus) and detonated a belt laden with 700 grams of RDX explosive tucked below her dress. The former Prime Minister along with many others were killed in the explosion that followed. The assassination was caught on film through the lens of a local photographer, whose camera and film were found at the site. The cameraman himself also died in the blast but the camera remained intact.

The Assassination of Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi had numerous bodyguards, two of whom were Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, both Sikhs. On 31 October 1984 they assassinated Indira Gandhi with their service weapons in the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1, Safdarjung Road in New Delhi. As she was walking to be interviewed by the British actor Peter Ustinov filming a documentary for Irish television, she passed a wicket gate, guarded by Satwant and Beant. According to information available immediately following the incident, Beant Singh shot her thrice using his side-arm and Satwant Singh fired twenty-two rounds into her using a Sten submachine gun. Beant Singh was shot dead and Satwant Singh was shot and arrested by her other bodyguards.

Gandhi died on her way to the hospital, in her official car, but she was not declared dead until many hours later. She was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where doctors operated on her. Official accounts at the time stated as many as 29 entry and exit wounds and some reports stated 31 bullets were extracted from her body. She was cremated on 3 November, near Raj Ghat and the place was called Shakti Sthal. After her death, sectarian unrest created by congress politicians loyal to Indira Gandhi engulfed New Delhi and several other cities in India, including Kanpur, Asansol and Indore, leading to the death of thousands of Sikhs.

The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot and killed while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted; they were executed on 15 November 1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samādhi) at Rāj Ghāt, New Delhi, bears the epigraph "Hē Ram", which may be translated as "Oh God". These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed.

The Attempted Assassination of Adolf Hitler

The 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate German dictator Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg (East Prussia), in order to take power by means of an emergency plan called Operation Valkyrie (Unternehmen Walküre). Operation Valkyrie was approved by Hitler himself and, on its face, it was intended to be used in the event that disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities caused a breakdown in law and order. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg played the key role in the plot and was in charge of Operation Valkyrie. Because of his position, von Stauffenberg was allowed access to Hitler for making reports and for carrying out the other intended use of Operation Valkyrie.

The 20 July plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. Its failure, both in Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" (Wolfschanze) Headquarters and then in Berlin's Bendlerblock, led to the arrest of more than 5,000 people, to the execution of about 200 people, and to the destruction of the resistance movement.

The Assassination of Ernst Röhm (Night of the Long Knives)

The day and night of June 30 marked the Night of the Long Knives, when the entire leadership of the SA was purged, along with many other political adversaries of the Nazis. At dawn that morning, Hitler flew to Munich and then drove to Bad Wiessee, where he personally arrested Röhm and the other SA leaders. All were imprisoned at Stadelheim Prison in Munich.

Hitler was uneasy authorising Röhm's execution and gave Röhm an opportunity to commit suicide. On July 2, he was visited by SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke (then Kommandant of Dachau) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Lippert, who lay a pistol on the table, told Röhm he had ten minutes to use it, and left. Röhm refused, and when Eicke and Lippert returned, he stood in the middle of the cell with his shirt opened, theatrically baring his chest as they shot him. Röhm was buried in the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery) in Munich.

The Assassination of Leon Trotsky

On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was successfully attacked in his home by a NKVD agent, Ramón Mercader, who drove the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull.

The blow was poorly delivered and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended. Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, shouting, "Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell." Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on August 21, 1940 as a result of severe brain damage.

According to James P. Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."

The Attempted Assassination of Vladimir Lenin

On August 30, 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he had spoken at a meeting and was on the way to his car. He had his foot on the running board. She called out to Lenin, who turned to answer. She immediately fired three shots hitting Lenin twice: one bullet, relatively harmless, lodged in the arm; the second round, more seriously entering at the juncture of Lenins jaw and neck, the third shot striking a woman who was talking with Lenin when the shooting began. Lenin fell to the ground, unconscious. He was taken to his apartment in the Kremlin, refusing to venture to a hospital since he believed that other assassins would be waiting there. Doctors were summoned but decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. Lenins health declined from this point. It is believed by some that the incident contributed to his later strokes.

The Assassination of Nicholas II of Russia

The Romanov family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, a militant Bolshevik stronghold. Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their physician, and three servants were woken and taken into a basement room and shot at 2:33 A.M. on 17 July. An official announcement appeared in the national press two days after the killing of the tsar and his family. It informed that the monarch had been executed on the order of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet under pressure posed by the approach of the Czechoslovaks

The Assassination of Grigori Rasputin

The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it invented by the very men who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. It is, however, generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a far-too-dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the few Romanov family members to escape the annihilation of the family during the Red Terror), apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men. Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. In fact, she expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.

Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Prince Yusupov. When he grabbed Prince Yusupov he ominously whispered in Yusupovs ear "you bad boy" and attempted to strangle him. As he made his bid to kill Yusupov, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, and he finally met his end there — as had both his siblings before him.

Three days later, the body of Rasputin, poisoned, shot four times and badly beaten, was recovered from the Neva River. An autopsy established that the cause of death was hypothermia. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him. Yet another report, also supporting the idea that he was still alive after submerging through the ice into the Neva River, is that after his body was pulled from the river, water was found in the lungs, showing that he didn't die until he was submerged

The Assassination of Alexander II of Russia

On March 13, 1881 (March 1 O.S.), Hryniewiecki was a part of the "fighting squad" who attacked Tsar Alexander II, who was passing down Nevsky Prospekt near the Winter Palace. When the first bomb went off, Alexander reflected a moment and said he wanted to have a look at the spot where the explosion had occurred. He walked over to the funnel-shaped pit formed by the bomb. The Cossack and the boy were still lying where they had fallen. He expressed solicitude for them. Many of the guards, rushed up to see and asked him if he was hurt, "Thank God! no," said the Tsar. "Come, let us look after the wounded." When his curiosity was satisfied, he was ready to drive away, Hryniewiecki who was leaning against the railing with a parcel in his hands, turned to face the Emperor and before any one could stop him, he shouted: "It is too soon to thank God yet, Alexander Nikolaevich," and raised both arms and made a sudden movement. There was a second deafening explosion.

On the shattered flagstones of the sidewalk near the railing the Tsar was lying in a pool of blood. He was fatally wounded in the explosion and died a few hours later. Beside him lay his attacker, Hryniewiecki, who was also gravely wounded and unconscious.
The assassination had been meant to ignite revolution. Hryniewiecki's fellow-conspirators — Nikolai Kibalchich, Sophia Perovskaya, Nikolai Rysakov, Timofei Mikhailov, Andrei Zhelyabov — were sentenced to death and were hanged on April 3, 1881. They were buried in an anonymous common grave.

The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead (while travelling in an open-topped car) in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six Serbian assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić.