Page 46 - All About History - Issue 38-16

15 Mad Murder Plots

When he arrived at the governor’s residence after the Archduke
first assassination attempt, Ferdinand exclaimed: “So
this is how you welcome your guests — with bombs?!”
Franz
Ferdinand of

Austria

METHOD: HAND GRENADE, SHOT
WHEN: 28 JUNE 1914
When Archduke Franz
03 Ferdinand visited
Sarajevo in the company
of his wife, Sophie, they
were greeted by an
assassin who hurled a hand grenade at
their car. The couple escaped injury and,
after a brief stop to gather themselves, set
out to visit those who had been injured in
the blast. Unfortunately their driver took
the wrong route and drove straight past
the café where Gavrilo Princip, one of the
co-conspirators behind the assassination
attempt, was drowning his sorrows.
Princip dashed out into the street and
shot the couple dead. He died in prison
four years later.
Grigori Rasputin This post-mortem photograph shows
the bullet wound to Rasputin’s head
METHOD: CYANIDE IN CAKE AND WINE, SHOT, BEATEN, DROWNED
WHEN: 30 DECEMBER 1916
Suspicious of the influence the
04 mad monk wielded over
Tsarina Alexandra and the
royal household, concerned
nobles decided to take out the
holy man once and for all. In a conspiracy led
by Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin was lured to
the prince’s palace where he was poisoned, shot
multiple times, beaten and finally wrapped in a
heavy cloth and thrown into the Malaya Nevka
River. Although the conspirators, some of whom
were later exiled, believed him to be dead at the
time, it later transpired that the monk may have
actually died by drowning, having survived
poison, a beating and several bullets.
How to murder

a mystic

Grigori Rasputin has become iconic thanks to the bizarre circumstances of his
death that seem to suggest he was more Superman than mad monk

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7
Rasputin is lured to Reluctant to eat the cakes With the poison having Miraculously surviving Co-conspirator Vladimir Wrapped in heavy cloth The following day,

Prince Yusupov’s palace, on o er, the plan looks no e ect, a panicked the poison and bullets, Purishkevich shoots and with hands bound, Rasputin’s body is
where an array of wine set to fail until the monk Yusupov shoots Rasputin, Rasputin gets to his feet Rasputin multiple times. Rasputin’s corpse is recovered from the river.

and delicacies laced with nally begins to sip at the apparently killing him. and attacks Yusupov Apparently de nitely thrown into the Malaya Tsar Nicholas II forbids an

cyanide await him. poisoned wine. Yusupov summons the before dashing from the dead, the monk is Nevka River, which ­ows oƒcial inquest, fearing

other conspirators from palace and into the night. returned to the palace to the sea. that it will make heroes of
elsewhere in the palace. and beaten by Yusupov. the assassins.
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