History is replete with tales of retribution, power struggles and bloody murders; however there are certain murders that do not often get as much coverage as they should for a variety of reasons. However, the following murders and assassinations that took place at different points in history are as spine chilling as the ones that might have received a lot of coverage from historians from different eras. Want to know more top 10 facts?
It is widely believed that German super soldier and Field Marshall during the World War II committed suicide, however there is a lot more to the story than what meets the eye. Although Rommel was a loyal German Field Marshall during World War II, who engineered famous victories for his country he did not believe in the Nazi ideology and before long he got himself entangled in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. However, according to historians, Rommel did not want to assassinate Hitler but instead wanted him to be tried by the court for his crimes.
Inevitably, the plot was uncovered and Rommel found himself in hot water with the Gestapo and the Nazi top brass. There was no doubt that he would be killed, however he was given the option of either being executed along with the mandatory harassment towards his family or he could commit suicide without going through a trial. Being an honourable man Rommel chose the latter and it was a cyanide pill that did the trick.
Leon Trotsky was one of the most influential leaders of the Russian Communist Party and in fact took an active part in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He was a towering political figure in Russia and remained one of the most trusted advisers of Vladimir Lenin within the Politburo, although they did have their disagreements. However, he did not get along as famously with Joseph Stalin and in the year 1927 he was sent into exile in Central Russia. After spending a few years in Turkey, he settled down in Mexico as an asylum seeker in 1936 and it was in 1940 that he was murdered under bizarre circumstances.
Allegedly a Jewish man named Franck Johnson went to visit him in Mexico City and after going through the rudimentary checks, he attacked Trotsky with a pickaxe. The head injuries suffered by the former Politburo member were responsible for his death and before he died he is believed to have said that Stalin had succeeded in finishing him off at last.
The fact that Shah Jahan was the Mughal emperor who built the magnificent Taj Mahal often papers over the fact that he was an extremely violent man and in fact ascended the throne of medieval India by way of a murderous campaign. Shah Jahan was the youngest son of Emperor Jehangir and the man who stood in his way was his brother and Jehangir’s eldest son Khusro. You would be surprised to know that Khusro had been blinded early in his life when he tried to rebel against his father and so he was no longer a threat for Shah Jahan, who had proved his mettle as a general. However, in a family in which a father blinds his eldest son is not the nicest place to be when you have a power hungry younger brother.
Once he became powerful enough, Shah Jahan decided to move in for the kill and ordered one of his accomplices to strangle his brother Khusro to death in his sleep. The task was carried out with clockwork precision and it still ranks among one of the most horrible episodes in Mughal history.
A man who feels wronged by his own government can take extreme steps sometimes but nothing as extreme as killing the Prime Minister of the land and that is why Spencer Perceval’s murder in May, 1812 at the hands of businessman John Bellingham comes across as particularly cold blooded. John Bellingham was once arrested for credit defaults in Russia in 1809 (yes, those were the times when there was something called a debtors’ prison) but the British embassy did not do enough to help his cause and that is believed to be reason why he murdered Spencer Perceval.
On the fateful day of 11th of May, 1812, Bellingham waited near Perceval’s chamber at the House of Commons and as soon as he spotted him, he calmly pulled the trigger of the pistol he was carrying and killed the Prime Minister. This was some vindictive man and would certainly be counted among one of the coolest assassins.
Revolutions started against the state almost always end in violence one way or the other and for Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata it ended violently on April 10th, 1919 when he was gunned down by the government authorities. Zapata belonged to a family of peasants and was well aware of the plight of the landless peasants in Mexico; however it was not until 1910 that he was successful in raising a group of peasants who could agitate against the Government and the fact that the Mexican Revolution was also at full swing at the time made the whole agitation even more effective.
After 9 years of agitation, the Mexican government finally got close to him and on the 10th of April, 1919 Zapata was confronted by the law enforcement authorities at Morelos and gunned down. The precision with which the Mexican government carried out the operation must have worked well as a warning for future agitators.
The Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty of India does have a history of violent deaths but nothing comes close to the cold blooded and violent assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi had become the Prime Minister of India after a landslide victory in the elections following the assassination of his mother Indira and during the 5 years of his tenure as the Prime Minister he brought in plenty of reforms, however the deployment of Indian Army in the troubled neighbouring state of Sri Lanka was admittedly an ill-advised move.
On 21st May, 1991 he was campaigning as the leader of the opposition in the Southern town of Sriperumbudur when someone from among the crowd placed a bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers near him. The bomb exploded and killed Rajiv Gandhi including a few others and the perpetrators of the spine chilling assassination were believed to be the member of the LTTE, the militant outfit in Sri Lanka who were not amused by India’s intervention in Sri Lanka’s domestic affairs.
It is often said that if a murderer has the right motivation and if he has a plan in place that he is capable of murdering anyone, which is why the murder of Italian King Umberto I in 1900 makes it to this list. In the 1898 the agricultural produce was not good enough and the Italian peasants demanded an audience with the king in order to get some sort of tax relief. However, their demonstrations were met with aggression and in the ensuing firing several demonstrators died.
The murderer Gaetano Bresci had migrated to America some years back but still had an active interest in the events in Italy and so when he heard about the incident, he decided that the king must not be spared. Bresci targeted the kings during a royal visit to the city of Milan and in one move he assassinated Umberto I with three bullets. He was later arrested of course but the sheer cunning and the cold blooded retribution he carried out deserves a mention.
The Republican United States President James Garfield, who became president in June 1882, could not govern the country for anything more than 4 months as his life was cut short by the bullets of an assassin, who felt that the president should have given him a Federal job. Charles Guiteau was not your regular violent assassin with a criminal past but a respected lawyer who wanted to work for the president but after being spurned he decided to avenge that snub by murdering James Garfield.
As one would expect from a lawyer, he went about the whole business in a remarkable professional manner that would make any sharpshooter proud and after following the president’s movements for a sustained period, he made his move at the Baltimore railway station. In those days of minimum security, Guiteau walked up to the president and pumped 2 bullets into his back. President Garfield died 3 months later.
The Irish Republican Army was a menacing outfit that agitated violently for years against the English occupation of Ireland, however the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten was probably their biggest scalp since the victim was a relative of the Queen herself. Lord Mountbatten was British war hero and a diplomat, who is famed for overseeing the partition of India in 1947. However, his decision to continue with his yearly holiday in Ireland proved to be fatal in 1979 since the IRA had placed a bomb in his fishing boat in order to assassinate him.
Thomas McMahon, the member of the IRA who claimed the responsibility for planting and activating the bomb, however was one of the most famous operatives of the outfit and went about the business perfectly. The bomb went off on 27th August, 1979 and killed Mountbatten along with his two grandsons. It was a huge moment for the IRA since they had been successful in killing someone who was known to be close to the Queen.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Ruling Tsar of Russia Nicholas II met a brutal fate at the hands of the Bolsheviks on 17th of July 1918. However, it was not only the Tsar who was killed in that early morning bloodbath, since the members of his family including his wife Alexandra, 5 children and their attendants also met the same fate at the hands of the Bolshevik soldiers. The Tsar and his family were bundled into a house in the city ofYekaterinburg and kept under house arrest for close to 4 months till day when they were murdered.
Fearing the advance of the White Army, the Bolsheviks took the family to the cellar of the house and in a swift operation the entire family, including the attendants was shot to death. According to the book The Last Days of the Romanovs, by Helen Rappaport, the soldiers drank vodka before they went to work on the family. More top10 reviews and facts at www.top10reviews.in
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