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

Hundreds of Sioux Indians are killed by US troops in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek

Humbert I, the king of Italy, is assassinated by an Italian-American anarchist, Gaetano Bresci

President McKinley is assassinated by an anarchist when visiting the Pan-American exhibition in Buffalo

The king of Portugal, Carlos I, and his heir, Luis Filipe, are shot as they ride in an open carriage in Lisbon

The Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin is assassinated in a Kiev theatre

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip

Three members of the Russian imperial family assassinate the influential charlatan Grigory Rasputin

The Irish Free State takes stringent measures against rebel terrorism, making possession even of a pistol a capital offence

After Michael Collins is killed in an ambush, William Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins emerge as leaders of the Irish Free State

Alvaro Obregón, the leading figure in Mexico's anti-clerical revolution, is shot by a Roman Catholic assassin

Irgun, a new Jewish paramilitary group, is set up by Haganah commanders frustrated by the older organization's policies

Adolf Hitler visits his SA commander, Ernst Roehm, in his hotel before having him shot

Sergei Kirov, head of the party in Leningrad, is assassinated in his office, giving Stalin the pretext for his first massive purge

Avraham Stern forms the Stern Gang, a new Jewish terrorist group in Palestine and an offshoot of Irgun

An assassin sent by Stalin kills the exiled Trotsky in his home in Mexico City

Yitzhak Shamir becomes leader of the terrorist Stern gang in Palestine

Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded by Free Czech agents parachuted in from Britain

Future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin becomes leader of the underground terrorist group Irgun

Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes death from a bomb placed by Claus von Stauffenberg

Irgun terrorists detonate a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people

33-year old Aung San, prime minister of Burma, and six of his ministers are assassinated during a cabinet meeting

Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated at a Delhi prayer meeting by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse