At 10:20 am on 10 April 1993, a Polish immigrant to South Africa named Janusz Walus pulled up behind the head of the South African Communist Party, Chris Hani, in his driveway. Walus shouted, “Mr. Hani!”, which caused the anti-apartheid leader to turn around. The turn gave Walus an easier target, and he shot …
Even the best laid plans for an assassination can go awry, as one of the most famous military commanders of the Middle Ages, Vlad III, realized when he attempted to cut off the Ottoman Empire at the head. The Night Attack at Targoviste came at the end of a particularly violent struggle between the …
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian leader, but he was hanged in Budapest on 16 June 1958 on the orders of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, as “a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries.“ Nagy had not always been afoul of the Soviet government. At birth a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Nagy was wounded …
At the same time of the turn of the nineteenth century that Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek of Austria-Hungary were attempting to convince Emperor Franz Josef that their marriage would not lead to the end of the Empire, another culturally inappropriate marriage was taking place between Alexander I of Serbia and Draga Lunjevica Mašin. Draga, …
Anka Obrenović, who was also called Ana, was self-confident and fearless. She loved her last name and luxury. Because of her love of Viennese fashion, she was nicknamed “Anka Pomodarka”. She was killed in 1868 in the Topčider forest during the assassination of Mihailo Obrenović, and it is little known that she tried to protect …
A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough. — epitaph on the tomb of Alexander the Great Kings who conquer huge swathes of the known world before they are in their mid-thirties generally don’t die outside of battle, so it should come as no surprise that the rumors of poisoning began …
The murder of the queen had been represented to me as a deed lawful and meritorious. — Anthony Babington, executed for his part in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England It’s a strange turn of events that when assassinations are discussed, the discussion rarely includes the Hungarian Queen Elizabeth of Bosnia; …
Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow; and I won’t have to send a second. — message from Tito to Stalin found on Stalin’s desk after his death. In the …
Salami tactics refers to a divide and conquer approach, which aims to split up the opposition. The expression evokes the idea of slicing up one’s opposition in the same way as one might slice up a salami. — politicaldictionary.com The entire face of the world changed when Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy agreed to resign …
They entered the Embassy of Yugoslavia in Stockholm at 09:45 on 7 April 1971. By 10:35 it was all over. The 1971 attack on the Yugoslav Embassy was the second such incident on a foreign delegation in 1971’s Sweden. The first incident also targeted the Yugoslavs, and took place on 10 February in Gothenburg at …