The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. Wikimedia Commons.
2. Martin Luther King Jr., eventually the victim of an assassin, was almost killed in 1958 when he was stabbed in the chest whilst signing books in Harlem
Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1929) was an American minister who became the de facto leader of the civil rights movement until his assassination in 1968. Advancing the non-violent tactics of civil disobedience inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is most remembered today for his legendary speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial entitled: “I Have a Dream”. Provoking a sustained backlash from white Americans in favor of racial segregation, King and his followers were subjected to intense violence and repeated attempts on their lives throughout the civil rights movement.
Facing assassination for the first time on September 20, 1958, whilst signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in a department store in Harlem, New York City, King was attacked by Izola Curry. Believing that King was conspiring against her with communists, the mentally ill Curry stabbed King in the chest with a letter opener. Hospitalized for several weeks, King recovered after emergency surgery and reflected upon the experience in later works. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray, a white supremacist opposed to the racial equality preached and advocated for by King.
Portrait of Adolf Hitler; author unknown (c. 1938). Wikimedia Commons.
1. The subject of dozens of assassination plots, German dictator Adolf Hitler survived them all before eventually killing himself at the end of the Second World War
Adolf Hitler (b. 1889) was the leader of the German Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany, and subsequently Führer of Germany from 1934 until his death in 1945. Initiating a one-party dictatorship in 1933, Hitler presided over a policy of extreme nationalism, aggressive expansionism, and racial purity, contributing to the outbreak of World War II and the mass murder of civilians during the Holocaust. Due to the radical nature of his politics, Hitler was the subject of countless assassination plots, with current estimates placing the confirmed number at forty-two, with many more believed to remain undocumented.
Surviving them all, the earliest known attempt was made in 1932, with Hitler and several close members of staff falling dangerously ill after consuming meals at the Kaiserhof Hotel believed to have been laced with poison. The most famous and closest to success, the July 20 Plot came within centimeters of assassinating the Führer, along with the preponderance of the German High Command, during a meeting at the Wolf’s Lair. Spared by a table-leg which muted the blast from a bomb planted by Claus von Stauffenberg, Hitler survived with only minor injuries, whilst three officers died and more than twenty suffered serious wounds.
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