Most Shocking Assassinations In History

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was the most powerful man on earth. Young, charismatic, beloved by millions. On November 22nd, 1963, he was riding in an open motorcade through Dele Plaza in Dallas, Texas, waving to cheering crowds on a bright, sunny afternoon. He never made it out of that car alive. At 12:30 p.m., shots rang out. The first bullet struck Kennedy in the upper back, exiting through his throat. He lurched forward. His wife, Jackie, turned toward him, confused. Then came the second shot. It struck the president in the head, violently, snapping it backward, spraying blood and matter across the back of the limousine. Jackie Kennedy crawled onto the trunk of the moving car in a state of shock, reaching for fragments of her husband's skull on the boot of the vehicle. Secret Service agent Clint Hill scrambled onto the back of the car, pushing her back into her seat as the motorcade raced toward Parkland Memorial Hospital. It was too late. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 100 p.m. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with Communist sympathies, was arrested later that day. He never stood trial.

[00:01:06]Two days later, a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot Oswald dead in the basement of Dallas police headquarters on live television in front of dozens of officers. Kennedy was 46 years old.

[00:01:18]Oswald was 24. Ruby died in prison in 1967 before his retrial could begin. The Warranting Commission concluded Oswald acted alone. 60 years later, millions still don't believe it. The files remain partially classified to this day.

[00:01:33]Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi had survived British imprisonment, colonial brutality, and decades of struggle to win India its independence. He was 78 years old, frail, and still walking to his daily prayer meetings every evening.

[00:01:48]On January 30th, 1948, Gandhi was walking through the garden of Berla House in New Delhi toward his prayer ground supported by two of his grand nieces. A crowd had gathered as usual. A man named Natharam Goce stepped forward from the crowd, bowed to Gandhi in a gesture of respect, then drew a semi-automatic pistol, and fired three shots at pointblank range into Gandhi's chest and abdomen. Gandhi collapsed. His last words according to those beside him were, "Hey Ram, oh God." He was dead within minutes. Goce was a Hindu nationalist who blamed Gandhi for being too accommodating toward Muslims during the violent partition of India and Pakistan. He made no attempt to flee. He stood there pistol raised until the crowd seized him. At his trial, Goat showed no remorse. He gave a lengthy speech defending his actions, arguing Gandhi's policies had weakened India.

[00:02:42]The speech was so persuasive the judge ordered it suppressed, fearing it might inspire copycats. Goatsay was hanged on November 15th, 1949. Gandhi's assassination stunned the world. The man who had preached nonviolence his entire life was killed by a bullet fired at pointblank range in his own garden.

[00:03:01]Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar had just been declared dictator Bed Bedwell, dictator in perpetuity of the Roman Republic. He was the most powerful man in the known world. And on March 15th, 44 BC, a date history would forever call the eyides of March. A group of Roman senators decided that power had to end.

[00:03:22]23 senators calling themselves the Liberator had been secretly plotting for months. Among them was Marcus Junius Bruis, a man Caesar trusted completely, a man Caesar reportedly loved like a son. Caesar arrived at the theater of Pompei for a Senate meeting. One of the conspirators approached him with a petition, grabbing his toga to prevent him from moving. Then the knives came out. The first stab struck him in the neck. Caesar grabbed the blade with his bare hands, cutting his palms. Then they came from every direction. Senator after senator stepping forward to drive a blade into him, making each man equally guilty, equally committed. 23 stab wounds. Caesar staggered, tried to maintain his dignity, pulling his toga over his face as he fell so the crowd would not see his expression. He collapsed at the base of a statue of his old enemy Pompei and bled to death on the Senate floor. Of the 23 wounds, only one was fatal, a single stab to the chest that pierced his aorta. The other 22 were non-lethal, a mob of panicked, inexperienced men stabbing wildly in a moment of terrified frenzy. Brutus and the other conspirators fled Rome. Within three years, every single one of them was dead, killed in the civil wars that followed. The republic they tried to save was gone forever. Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, became Augustus, the first Roman emperor. The assassination that was supposed to save democracy destroyed it. Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War was essentially over. The Union had won. Abraham Lincoln was in the best mood he'd been in in years. On the evening of April 14th, 1865, he attended a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington DC. Lincoln sat in the presidential box above the stage, laughing at the play.

[00:05:13]His wife Mary Todd Lincoln beside him.

[00:05:16]John Wils Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, knew the theater intimately. He knew the layout, he knew the staff, and he knew exactly when the biggest laugh of the night would come. a moment when the audience noise would cover the sound of a gunshot. At 10:15 PM, during that exact moment of laughter, Booth slipped into the presidential box, pressed a singleshot Daringer pistol against the back of Lincoln's head and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered behind Lincoln's left ear, and lodged behind his right eye. Lincoln slumped forward.

[00:05:49]Mary Todd Lincoln screamed. A young officer in the box, Major Henry Wthbone, lunged at Booth, who slashed him deeply across the arm with a knife before leaping from the box to the stage below.

[00:06:00]His spur caught on a decorative flag, and Booth landed awkwardly, fracturing his left leg. He still managed to escape, shouting, "Sick seer tyrannis!"

[00:06:10]thus always to tyrants before limping off stage and fleeing into the night on horseback. Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street.

[00:06:18]Doctors worked through the night, but there was nothing to be done. The bullet had done catastrophic damage. Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15th, 1865. He was 56 years old. Booth was tracked down 12 days later, hiding in a Virginia barn. When he refused to surrender, the barn was set on fire. A soldier named Boston Corbett shot Booth through a gap in the barn wall, striking him in the neck. Booth was dragged out paralyzed and died on the porch a few hours later. His last words looking at his own hands were useless. Useless.

[00:06:54]Archduke France Ferdinand. Archduke France Ferdinand was the heir to the Austrohungarian Empire. On June 28th, 1914, he arrived in Sarbo for an official visit with his wife Sophie. It was their wedding anniversary. What followed was one of the most consequential and almost accidentally successful assassinations in human history. A group of six young Serbian nationalists called the Black Hand had positioned themselves along the Archduke's motorcade route, each armed with a bomb or pistol. Their goal was to spark a war that would free the South Slavic people from Austrohungarian rule.

[00:07:33]The first attempt failed completely. One conspirator lost his nerve and did nothing. A second threw a bomb at the Archduke's car. It bounced off and exploded under the following vehicle, wounding several people. The Archduke's car sped away. The bombers scattered.

[00:07:49]The assassination appeared to have failed. Then came the chaos that changed everything. After visiting the injured at the hospital, France Ferdinand's driver took a wrong turn. Someone told him to stop and reverse. The car stalled directly in front of a delicatessan where one of the failed conspirators, 19-year-old Gabriilo Princip, had stopped to buy a sandwich after abandoning the mission entirely. Princip looked up. The Archduke was 5 ft away.

[00:08:18]He stepped forward and fired two shots.

[00:08:21]The first struck Sophie in the abdomen.

[00:08:24]The second struck France Ferdinand in the jugular vein. Both died within the hour. Within six weeks, the chain reaction of alliances and ultimatums that followed dragged the entire world into war. World War I. 17 million people dead. All because a driver took a wrong turn. Anoir Sadat. Anoir Sadat had done what nobody thought possible. The Egyptian president had made peace with Israel, signing the Camp David Accords and becoming the first Arab leader to officially recognize the Jewish state.

[00:08:58]He won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. He also made enemies that never forgave him. On October 6th, 1981, Sadat was seated in the reviewing stands at a military parade in Cairo, commemorating the anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Thousands were watching. Television cameras were rolling. A military truck in the parade suddenly stopped in front of the stands. Soldiers jumped out.

[00:09:23]Sadat stood, apparently thinking they were about to salute him. They opened fire with automatic weapons. Sadat was struck by six bullets and multiple grenade fragments. He was rushed to hospital but died two hours later. He was 62 years old. The attackers were members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a radical Islamist group that viewed Sadat's peace with Israel as an unforgivable betrayal of Islam. The lead assassin, Lieutenant Khaled Islami, reportedly shouted, "I have killed the pharaoh." as he fired. Islami was executed by firing squad in April 1982.

[00:09:59]Sadat's vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who was seated beside him and survived, took power immediately and ruled Egypt for the next 30 years. The man who made peace was killed for