After the assassination of Omar, Othman is elected as the third Muslim caliph

Ali is assassinated and Mu'awiya becomes the fifth Muslim caliph, establishing the Umayyad dynasty

So many Slavs are captured and sold, in the movement eastwards of the Germans, that their name becomes the European word for a slave

After the murder of his rival, in a church in Dumfries, Robert de Bruce is crowned king of Scots at Scone

Udiana Deva, the last Hindu ruler of Kashmir, is murdered by his Muslim prime minister

Henry IV is assassinated in a Paris street by a Roman Catholic, François Ravaillac

The Swedish king Gustavus III is assassinated at a midnight masquerade in Stockholm – an event later dramatized by Verdi

During four September days, thugs are encouraged to massacre some 1400 aristocrats and priests held in Paris prisons

25-year-old Charlotte Corday gains access to prominent republican Jean-Paul Marat and stabs him in his bath

The Terror begins in republican France, with executions rising to more than 3000 in December

Robespierre and St Just succeed in sending Danton and his faction to the guillotine in April

Robespierre and his faction go to the guillotine in July, in the final bloodletting of the Terror

All but one of 300 Mameluke guests are assassinated during an entertainment by Muhammad Ali in Cairo

The British prime minister, Spencer Perceval, is assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham

Sucre is assassinated on his journey home to Quito from a congress in Bogotá

The Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, and his brother are killed by an armed mob in Nauvoo

The prime minister of the papal states, Pellegrino Rossi, is assassinated in Rome

On a visit to a Washington theatre, Lincoln is assassinated in his box by John Wilkes Booth

The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is founded at Pulaski, in Tennessee, on Christmas Eve

Maximilian, the emperor of Mexico, and two of his generals are shot after being surrounded and captured at Querétaro

Turkish irregular soldiers, the ferocious bashibazouks, massacre some 15,000 Bulgarian civilians

Russia's reforming tsar, Alexander II, is killed by hand-made grenades thrown at his carriage in St Petersburg

US president James Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railway station, and dies two months later

Irish chief secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and a colleague are assassinated in Phoenix Park in Dublin

Lenin's elder brother Alexander, while still a student, is executed for his part in a plot to assassinate the tsar, Alexander III