The 10 Craziest Failed Assassination Attempts

In action movies, heroes and villains are hard to kill. In real life, it's rare that someone escapes a premeditated attempt on their life. It does happen, though, and sometimes quite miraculously.

Fifty years ago, on August 22, 1962, OAS (Organisation de l'armée secrète) conspirators attempted to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle because they believed his ceding of Algeria to Algerian nationalists betrayed France. While de Gaulle and his wife were traveling from Elysee Palace to Orly Airport, attackers fired 140 bullets at their Citroën DS, killing two of the president's motorcycle bodyguards and blowing out all four of the vehicle's tires. Thanks to the car's impressive suspension system, the president's driver was able to accelerate out of a potentially fatal front-wheel skid, and the de Gaulles survived by ducking the hail of bullets.

De Gaulle's near-death experience is one of the closest calls in history, but it isn't the only time a notable historical figure lived through a stare down with the Grim Reaper. In honor of his anniversary, Complex marvels at The 10 Craziest Failed Assassination Attempts.

Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

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Attacker: Robert-François Damiens
Date: January 1757

As far as assassination attempts go, Louis XV’s attacker, Robert-François Damiens’ was a pretty weak effort. The story goes that on a cold, snowy night in January 1757, Damiens approached the then-king, passing by his guards (YOU HAD ONE JOB!), and stabbed him in the side with a small penknife.

Clearly, Damiens didn’t think this plan over, because he used a very tiny blade and, on a cold night, the King of France who can afford anything he wants was likely to be wearing a lot of layers so that his delicate skin didn’t get frostbite. No blade is going to do serious damage through all that.

Louis XV was clearly a gigantic drama queen, because after he was stabbed, he believed he was going to die and immediately apologized to his wife, the queen, for cheating on her with more mistresses than Tiger Woods could ever dream of. Ultimately, he was OK, thanks to the many layers he had on; the blade didn’t even pass more than half an inch into him, a fact that Voltaire would later make fun of. So, Louis XV went on, and family dinners were probably super awkward after that. Damiens, on the other hand, was executed two months later.

Attacker: John Schrank
Date: October 14, 1912

Getting shot is physically and mentally painful and causes most people to shut down whatever they're doing. Most people are not Theodore Roosevelt, though. While campaigning in Milwaukee, WI, Roosevelt was shot by a saloon owner named John Schrank, but because of a steel glasses case and a 50-page speech folded up in his breast pocket, the bullet didn’t do damage past breaking the skin and lodging itself in his chest.

Getting shot is an acceptable excuse to cancel the rest of your day’s plans and head over the ER to get treatment, but Teddy would have none of that. Instead of taking that logical path, Teddy went on to deliver a scheduled speech for 90 minutes, opening with the line, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Now that is the definition of gangster.

Attacker: Richard Lawrence
Date: January 30, 1835

The odds of two separate guns misfiring one after another have to be slim, so clearly Richard Lawrence is some sort of special snowflake. When he attempted to assassinate then-President of the United States Andrew Jackson, that is just what happened. He shot at Jackson with one pistol that misfired, then tried again with another only to have that one misfire as well.

Jackson, not one to be shot at, advanced on Lawrence and beat him with his cane until Lawrence was apprehended. Bad. Ass.

Attacker: John Hinkley Jr.
Date: March 30, 1981

What’s significant about this assassination attempt isn’t the attack so much as the catalyst for it: actor Jodie Foster. In the years prior to the incident, Reagan’s attacker, John Hinkley Jr., became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, which starred Robert De Niro as a fucked-up antihero who wants to assassinate a presidential candidate, and Jodie Foster as a child prostitute.

Hinkley became so obsessed with Foster that he moved to New Haven, CT, after finding out she was attending Yale University there, and even enrolled in a writing class on campus so he could be close to her and leave her poems and notes. His attempts to make contact were unsuccessful, however, and Hinkley began to grow agitated that she wasn’t noticing him, so he came up with a plan to get her attention: assassinate the president, a la Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He originally intended on murdering Jimmy Carter, but was arrested in Nashville for unlawful possession of a firearm before he could make any attempts on Carter’s life.

It wasn’t until 1981, when Ronald Reagan had taken office, that he carried out his plan. He approached Reagan outside of a Hilton Hotel in DC and fired six shots at him; none hit Reagan directly, but one bullet did ricochet off of the presidential limousine to hit Reagan in the chest, puncturing his lung and causing serious internal bleeding. Thanks to prompt medical attention, he survived. Hinkley was tried for attempted murder after the attack, but found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is currently being held at a mental institution, having been diagnosed with a number of personality disorders.

Attacker: Israeli Mossad agents
Date: September 25, 1997

As a retaliation for the Mahane Yehuda Market Bombings, a July 1997 attack by Palestinian suicide bombers on a major market in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered two Israeli Mossad agents to assassinate Mashal, who was, at the time, the Jordanian branch chief of Palestinian Sunni Islamic political party, Hamas.

The agents entered the city using Canadian passports and waited for Mashal at his office. As he was entering, one agent injected a chemically modified toxin called levofentanyl into his left ear.

All did not go as planned, though. Mashal’s chauffeur saw what was going down and hit the poison-toting agent with a newspaper, and a security guard chased the agents once they escaped to their car. The two were apprehended, and King Hussein of Jordan forced Netanyahu to hand over an antidote by getting none other than then-President Bill Clinton to persuade him.

Attacker: CIA/Various
Date: 638 times

The CIA didn’t actually try to kill Fidel Castro 638 times, but according to the 2006 UK documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro, they did have a great number of plans to kill the Cuban dictator. That, along with attempts by others, including Cuban exiles, puts the tally of attempts made against Castro’s life at over 600, which is pretty crazy.

Among the plans? The CIA at one point considered taking advantage of Castro’s love of scuba-diving by planting mollusk shells that contained explosives in the ocean when he was underwater, and painting them bright colors so that he would be attracted to them. Then, when he got close enough—boom. Another idea was reportedly planting a diving suit for him that was infected with fungus that would cause a lethal skin disease. They even recruited a former lover of his to murder him, but that didn’t work out because once they were alone, Castro figured out that she intended on shooting him and prompted her to do just that, even offering her his gun. She told him she couldn’t go through with it. Other attempts including poisonous pens, exploding cigars, and bacterial poisons designed to be dissolved in his coffee or tea.

Castro, though no longer in office, remains alive to this day.

Attacker: Giuseppe Zangara
Date: February 15, 1933

All the would-be assassins on this list came up short, but none quite so literally as Giuseppe Zangara. While watching Franklin D. Roosevelt give a speech in Miami, the mentally unstable man attempted to shoot the US President–elect. To do so, the five-foot tall gunman had to climb his elfin self onto a folding chair so he could see his target clearly.

After he fired one shot, the crowd set upon him, hitting him and knocking him off of his perch, ruining his aim as he licked off four more shots. In all, five people were struck, including Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago, who was near F.D.R. and died six weeks later from his wounds.

Attacker: Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg
Date: July 20, 1944

Anyone who made it through high school history, or anyone who likes Tom Cruise movies (we’re not judging), will remember the most famous of the 42 attempts made on German dictator Adolf Hitler’s life, Operation Valkyrie. The plot, cooked up by the German Resistance, involved a briefcase filled with explosives to be planted next to Hitler at a meeting. It was foiled when the briefcase was unwittingly moved by Generalmajor Heinz Brandt, redirecting its blast and killing Brandt and three other men, none of whom were named Adolf. All those involved in the July 20th plan were executed, and Hitler only suffered a perforated eardrum as a result of the attack.

Attacker: Lewis Powell
Date: April 14, 1865

US Secretary of State Seward was supposed to die on the same day that President Abraham Lincoln did, in an attack that coincided with John Wilkes Booth’s and another attack by George Atzerodt on then-Vice President Andrew Johnson. Powell's original intention had been to sneak into the Seward home under the excuse that he was delivering medicine for a bedridden Seward, who had been injured in a carriage accident nine days prior. He would then go to Seward’s room and kill him.

The plan went smoothly until Powell got into the home. He ran into Seward’s eldest son, Frederick, on the stairs, who informed him that Seward was sleeping and he’d take the medicine to his father himself. Powell panicked and tried to shoot Frederick, but his gun misfired, and he took to beating Frederick over the head with it instead.

Though this led to discovery by Seward’s daughter, Fanny, Powell kept on trying to carry out his plot, and barged into Seward’s room with a dagger. He stabbed Seward multiple times in the face and neck before fleeing, injuring Seward’s other son, a soldier, a nurse, and a messenger on his way out as well. They all survived and Powell was apprehended the next day at a boarding house, then later hanged for the presidential assassination conspiracy.

Attacker: Organisation de l'armée secrète conspirators
Date: August 22, 1962

When OAS conspirators attempted to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle, they underestimated the value of a good automobile. While de Gaulle and his wife were traveling from Elysee Palace to Orly Airport, attackers fired 140 bullets at their Citroën DS, killing two of the president's motorcycle bodyguards and blowing out all four of the vehicle's tires. Thede Gaulles survived the hail of bullets by ducking down, and, thanks to the car's impressive suspension system, the president's chauffeur was able to accelerate out of a potentially fatal front-wheel skid. Needless to say, de Gaulle was a champion of the Citroën brand until he died, just short of his 80th birthday, in 1970.