I think it would only count if the *only* goal of the raid was to kill bin Laden and there was never any intention to capture him. Though we don't usually think of teams of soldiers as assassins, I guess that's not a good enough reason to discount it as such.
It is an assassination, but not like these here... I think none of the above ones were a military target or international condemned villains... and it didn't come as a surprise as most of these...
Only because I can never remember how to spell him. Tried Trotzky, Trozky, Trotzki, Trocky... A bit more leniency would be nice. Come on, the pronunciation would still be the same.
Every time this comes up I type Tolstoy, and when I inevitably fail to remember Trostky's name I wonder if I have learned nothing from the 14 times this came up before
Garfield was not assassinated. He would have survived had the doctors not kept putting their germy fingers in the bullethole. Thats what killed him, not the gunshot itself. If it had happened with better medical technology, he would have lived.
Much like the laws respecting murder, all it takes for something to be considered an assassination is an act that starts the chain of events directly leading to the person's death. The gunshots caused the infection, which caused the blood poisoning and pneumonia, which caused the heart attack that eventually killed him 10 weeks later. There's a direct causal link there. It's not as if he died years later falling down a staircase partially as a result of a limp he incurred as a result of being shot - there's no grey area.
So the bullet fired at him was intended to just provide a way for dirty fingered doctors to probe around and eventually kill him? That's some assassin!!
I believe that while Reagan's death was not caused by John Hinckly's gunshot - James Brady's death three decades after the shooting was ruled a homicide. Makes it possibly worthy of this quiz - but Brady wasn't the target.
I would absolutely consider Jack Ruby walking up to Lee Harvey Oswald and shooting him an assassination. He was being transported to a prison, and it was all captured on live television.
pretty clearly? Where do you people get this stuff from? Tacitus wrote a single page about a fire in Rome which had been blamed on Christians. On that page, he devotes a single sentence to describing the origins of Christianity. Within that single sentence, he devotes five words to the execution of "Christus." Crucifixion isn't mentioned, nor any specifics about what happened at all though he goes on to mention Pilate after that. Tacitus did not witness the event, nor does he mention any primary sources. It's very probable he is simply relating the beliefs of the people he is describing that were blamed for the fire. It would be like someone in North America meeting a Muslim, and then writing about this guy Muhammad who flew to Jerusalem on a man-faced horse. This obviously carries no weight at all, and doesn't make us sure of anything. But to someone determined to have faith, this gets misrepresented as a clear description.
It's true I've misrepresented it - my comment was from a while ago and I was misremembering my Latin lessons. There is another section where he graphically described the crucifixion of Christians during Nero's parties and I think I was conflating the mentions.
However, I'm hardly 'determined to have faith' since I'm literally an atheist, but sure, make all the assumptions you like.
I know that a lot has been said about these quizes being considered too America-centred. I do agree that it is legitimate for a website operated from America to be focused on AMerican topics. However, if you name the quiz Famous Assasinations (without any qualifications), and then devote so much much space to personalities of American, rather than global significance (Robert Kennedy, Malcom X, Huey Long, Harvey Milk, James Garfield etc), there is something disproportionate about it.
I'm not American, but most of these are pretty famous. I'd never heard of Huey Long, but now I have, so I've learnt something. He seemed like a decent chap.
Which assassinations of global/international significance do you think were left off? I can think of King Faisal (but probably only because I lived in Saudi for many years), and.... that's about it. Who else have most people heard of?
Though I'll add that I'm American and also had to look up Huey Long.
Well I'm not complaining, the US quite simply has an impressive number of high profile assassinations. In a more international context though the following spring to mind: Ernst Röhm (and other night of the long knives victims), Patrice Lumumba, Pancho Villa, Steve Biko (I'd count it as an assassination), Cicero, Rasputin, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Shaka Zulu, Luis Carlos Galan, Andres Escobar (for the football/soccer fans), Zapata and Tsar Nicholas 2 (and family). Plenty to choose from. Maybe some ideas for a more challenging second part.
Tsar Alexander II, Olof Palme, Indira Gandhi, Thomas Sankara, Muammar Gaddafi, Rafael Trujillo, Pancho Villa, Zapata just to name a few + half the kings, queens and other rulers.
kolp: Nikolai I've heard of and I visited the spot where he was assassinated. I would have gotten that one. Rasputin I wouldn't call an assassination. I know Cicero, Shaka, the Gandhis, and Villa... but didn't know any of them were assassinated. (though another Gandhi would be redundant on this quiz)
Helen: is there some genetic disorder you have that makes it impossible for you to not be a pest? The sentence clearly beings "I can think of"... are you suggesting I thought of all these others and chose not to mention them?
skukka: Gaddafi was not assassinated he was beaten to death by an angry mob.
oh wait I'm thinking of Aleksandr II, not Nikolai... I've been to the church in St Petersburg built atop the spot where Aleksandr was assassinated. Amazing church, by the way. Much prettier than St Basil's.
From Wikipedia: "Lumumba was captured and imprisoned en route by state authorities under Mobutu and executed by a firing squad under the command of the Katangan authorities. Following his assassination, he was widely seen as a martyr for the wider Pan-African movement."
So I guess he was technically executed, but some may consider it an assassination. I think the line starts to blur when it's carried out by authorities and/or is extrajudicial. Both are true with Lumumba, who didn't have a trial and was executed with Belgian assistance. I guess I don't have a good answer to your question, but I would say in a sense it's both an assassination and execution.
Are you saying Lennon wasn't "important" enough to merit being on the quiz? It seems an odd reply to a comment that was saying that this American website is too American...
I'm not American but think that Robert Kennedy, all of the presidents and Malcolm X are pretty well known internationally. I'd never heard of Huey Long or Harvey Milk, but I didn't get the answer for Seoul either. 10 out of 20 of the answers aren't Americans.
From now on you can disabuse yourself of the idea that his name was ever Thomas a Becket. Whenever I hear of this topic I always think of Stephen Fry's voice explaining there never was an 'a' in the middle of his name. It came up on QI.
Another non-American assassination to consider (and one of the few regarded as a blessing) was Henrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid in South Africa.
Thinking of "blessing" assassinations leads inevitably to Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi. His death was followed by massacres.
President of South Korea who transformed the nation - it went from a poor, backwater following years of Japanese colonial rule to a thriving modern economy that created global super-brands such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG. Despite his enormous achievements in transforming South Korea's economy he was also controversial for coming to power in a military coup d'etat. He went to an election once, which he won, but then declared martial law. He was a staunch US ally and sent the largest contingent of troops to Vietnam of any US ally. He avoided several North Korean assassination attempts before finally succumbing to an assassination by his own chief of intelligence. His daughter, Park Geun-hye, is the current South Korean president.
Huey Long and Harvey Milk? Really? Two American senators, almost all of the others were famous or their deaths had global implications. Long and Milk's deaths, whilst tragic, would hardly had made headlines outside America. I'd suggest replacing them with someone who a non American has a remote chance of having heard of.
This is nitpicky but all of these assassinations are in date order, and that's good - but two are out of order. RFK was assassinated AFTER MLK. Doesn't change the answers one bit - enjoyed the quiz.
Quizmaster, have you thought about adding Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago who was killed by shots allegedly aimed at FDR? It has been speculated that Cermak was the target (even if it is unlikely) and, to be frank, if 11% can guess who obscure but important (known for his hilarious filibusters) Senator Huey Long is, then, surely, some will be able to guess Cermak. If you at least answer the question I will be satisfied.
Good quiz, I enjoyed reading the comments, I'm always glad to see we still have such a great bunch of biased, big headed, know-all nit-picking commentators on Jetpunk.
I do not say this often, but this is a very us-centric quiz. Almost no Europe. What about Pim Fortuyn, Alexander Litvinenko or Olof Palme? Perhaps the most prominent cases in post-WWII history.
Another older interesting examples might be King Alexander I. of Yugoslavia (the first assassination broadcast live on TV, I believe), Mehmet Talaat Pascha (former Ottoman dictator responsible for Armenian genocide), Reinhard Heydrich (highest ranking Nazi official ever killed, directly responsible for holocaust) or Aleksandar Stamboliyski (Bulgarian prime minister murdered for signing the Treaty of Niš).
Other famous examples around the world include Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi (yeah, kinda problem with surname though) and maybe even Mujibur Rahman, Laurent Désiré Kabila or Juvénal Habyarimana (all of them were leaders of their nations at that time and last one´s death even marked the beginning of Rwandan genocide).
It would be nice to enlarge the quiz and include more interesting cases.
Maybe you may try to google them. Generally those were people, whose death affected the history of at least one important country (Palme was prime minister of Sweden murdered by South African spies, Litvinenko was a russian spy defector to the UK killed by his former fellows etc.). Not sure, if the same could be said about Harvey Milk and Huey Long (only two in the quiz, that I never heard about in my whole life). I have to admit, I would not expect such a great ignorance from someone as educated as you...
Maybe the people in US would get like 5 % for some of these (dictator Park of South Korea got only 6 %, which surprised me a bit, I would say his significance is comparable to the names suggested), but there are also quiz takers from Europe and elsewhere in the world, who are interested about their own history.
I'm guessing at least half of the people who got Park right did so by guessing common Korean names after seeing the location was Seoul. If you guess "Park," "Pak," "Kim," and "Lee" that covers the majority of people in the city.
Quizmaster doesn't like to include answers on front-page quizzes that are unknown to 95+% of the people taking the quizzes. I don't necessarily agree with this policy, and I'm not trying to excuse my own ignorance, I'm just saying that the reasons why these people are not on the quiz isn't mysterious. They're just not that well-known. I am certain that if Habyarimana were on here he would be guessed by less than 1% of quiz takers. I've authored quizzes myself with answers less esoteric than that that got guessed less than 1%, even though they never appeared on the front page (where they are taken by more people and thus averages go down).
So anyway if this really is the best list of alternate answers you can come up with, the quiz is fine as is.
I agree with this. Well worth adding more non-US figures including several of those you name - especially Palme, Litvinenko, Indira Gandhi and Habariyama.
Marat should be in there too, and probably the caliph Ali, one of the three or four biggest figures in the history of the world's second-biggest religion.
I don't think that this quiz is too American, and it's my own fault for forgetting the name: Beckett. However, never mind how important he was, or how much I love the Beatles, John Lennon was murdered, not assassinated.
Thomas Becket is widely known as Thomas à Becket, making it one of the names he's known by. In fact, we know quite a few historical figures by names they never went by in life or didn't use during their contemporary periods and were assigned later. This web site usually follows Wikipedia in using the "commonly-used name" in preference for things, viz. the names of countries (like "Ivory Coast").
No question that the best answer to the question is "Thomas Becket", as it is now; but since "Thomas à Becket" is widely known and used and therefore valid, it should be accepted. Let's not do some weird OED thing and not accept "Shakespeare" because it was never spelled that way in his lifetime.
One of the key figures of comunism.
Calling the police woo woo woo
However, I'm hardly 'determined to have faith' since I'm literally an atheist, but sure, make all the assumptions you like.
Though I'll add that I'm American and also had to look up Huey Long.
Helen: is there some genetic disorder you have that makes it impossible for you to not be a pest? The sentence clearly beings "I can think of"... are you suggesting I thought of all these others and chose not to mention them?
skukka: Gaddafi was not assassinated he was beaten to death by an angry mob.
So I guess he was technically executed, but some may consider it an assassination. I think the line starts to blur when it's carried out by authorities and/or is extrajudicial. Both are true with Lumumba, who didn't have a trial and was executed with Belgian assistance. I guess I don't have a good answer to your question, but I would say in a sense it's both an assassination and execution.
Thinking of "blessing" assassinations leads inevitably to Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi. His death was followed by massacres.
by that murderer Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was NOT assassinated!
Another older interesting examples might be King Alexander I. of Yugoslavia (the first assassination broadcast live on TV, I believe), Mehmet Talaat Pascha (former Ottoman dictator responsible for Armenian genocide), Reinhard Heydrich (highest ranking Nazi official ever killed, directly responsible for holocaust) or Aleksandar Stamboliyski (Bulgarian prime minister murdered for signing the Treaty of Niš).
Other famous examples around the world include Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi (yeah, kinda problem with surname though) and maybe even Mujibur Rahman, Laurent Désiré Kabila or Juvénal Habyarimana (all of them were leaders of their nations at that time and last one´s death even marked the beginning of Rwandan genocide).
It would be nice to enlarge the quiz and include more interesting cases.
Adding any one of these people to the quiz and you'd be looking at an answer guessed by somewhere between 1 and 0% of quiz takers.
Maybe the people in US would get like 5 % for some of these (dictator Park of South Korea got only 6 %, which surprised me a bit, I would say his significance is comparable to the names suggested), but there are also quiz takers from Europe and elsewhere in the world, who are interested about their own history.
Quizmaster doesn't like to include answers on front-page quizzes that are unknown to 95+% of the people taking the quizzes. I don't necessarily agree with this policy, and I'm not trying to excuse my own ignorance, I'm just saying that the reasons why these people are not on the quiz isn't mysterious. They're just not that well-known. I am certain that if Habyarimana were on here he would be guessed by less than 1% of quiz takers. I've authored quizzes myself with answers less esoteric than that that got guessed less than 1%, even though they never appeared on the front page (where they are taken by more people and thus averages go down).
So anyway if this really is the best list of alternate answers you can come up with, the quiz is fine as is.
Marat should be in there too, and probably the caliph Ali, one of the three or four biggest figures in the history of the world's second-biggest religion.
No question that the best answer to the question is "Thomas Becket", as it is now; but since "Thomas à Becket" is widely known and used and therefore valid, it should be accepted. Let's not do some weird OED thing and not accept "Shakespeare" because it was never spelled that way in his lifetime.