Political Assassinations Trivia Quiz

Answer: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Her victim was Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India. Gayatri bent to touch his feet at a temple in Chennai, India, and detonated six grenades in her suicide bomber belt, killing him instantly as well as at least 14 others, and wounding another 30. She was allegedly a part of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, and the assassination was in response to Gandhi sending Indian troops to Sri Lanka to fight the Tamil insurrectionist forces.

Answer: Hosni Mubarak

Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president, was assassinated in Cairo by TanTHim al Jihad. At the time, Hosni Mubarak was the vice president of Egypt. Mubarak eventually became Egypt's fourth president and served for over 30 years until the Arab Spring. He resigned as president in 2011.

Answer: No: he was not assassinated

Idi Amin fled Uganda in 1979, and eventually died (of liver complications) in exile in Saudi Arabia, never having returned to his homeland. He survived at least seven assassination attempts throughout the course of his life, but died of natural causes.

Answer: Thomas Sankara

Sankara is remembered for the progressive ideas he had regarding women, and for his commitment to seeing his country more egalitarian. However, international organizations documented human rights abuses by his administration, and he was intolerant of unions in any field or industry.

He was assassinated during a coup led by subsequent president Blaise Compaore, and it is believed that Liberia's notorious Charles Taylor assisted this operation.

Answer: Gavrilo Princip

Gavrilo Princip is the assassin who succeeded in the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which played a major part in the start of World War I. A bomb was thrown at the Archduke's car, but it failed to kill him. The Archduke then gave a speech at the Town Hall in Sarajevo, and was shot by Princip on his return journey.

Answer: Pan American Exposition

McKinley was shot as he entered the Temple of Music at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He died eight days later. His assassin was Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist thought to have been influenced by the successful assassination of King Umberto of Italy in 1900.

Answer: Nepal

Prince Dipendra, heir to the throne, fatally shot nine members of the royal family, including his mother and father, then killed himself. It is widely believed that he was angry because his choice of bride was denied by his parents. A popular rumor in Nepal is that Dipendra's uncle and subsequent king, Gyanendra, was behind the killings as no one from his family perished.

In 2006, just five years after the royal massacre, the civil war ended and the monarchy was stripped of power.

Answer: Salvador Allende

There is much literature regarding the United States' involvement with the 1973 Chilean coup that overthrew the leftist government of Allende, the first Marxist Latin-American president elected democratically. Consequently, there is still much speculation regarding the manner of Allende's death in spite of internationally convened panels that have ruled that suicide was an accurate conclusion.

His successor, Augusto Pinochet, instituted authoritarian rule in Chile for over 40 years.

Answer: Thomas D'Arcy McGee

McGee was born in Ireland, before emigrating first to the United States and eventually Canada. He was a delegate to the conferences that subsequently led to the forming of the federal parliamentary democracy that is Canada, and is thus considered to be a founding father of the country. Canadians don't go in for assassination very much - up until the beginning of the 21st century, McGee remains the only political figure at the federal level who has ever been assassinated in that country.

Answer: Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's first female prime minister (a daughter of a former Pakistani prime minister) and was twice dismissed from government amid corruption charges. She returned to Pakistan from exile in 2007 to set up a power-sharing agreement with then President Perez Musharraf, who was indicted in 2013 for conspiring to carry out the successful assassination attempt on her life.