The recent incident in Iraq has got me thinking. When was the last time a Head of State or major dignitary was assaulted on foreign soil? Arch-duke Ferdinand is the last one I can think of. There has to have been another in the last 94 years.
I am not looking for any political points, so please confine them to one of the many threads on MPSIMS.
Grenade was a dud, and possibly too far to have killed him. Still…
Someone lobbed a grenade at George W. Bush during a speech in Georgia (country, not state) in 2005.
For fatal assaults, the last one I can think of is former Nicaraguan ruler Anastasio Somoza being gunned down while in exile in Paraguay in 1980.
Here’s a few more:
In 1994 Cyprien Ntaryamira, President of Burundi, was killed when his plane, also carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down while approaching Kigali airport in Rwanda. However, Habyarmana was probably the primary target of the assassination.
Oh yeah - I had forgotten about the grenade.
Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. Of course Austria-Hungary was an empire, so you could argue that he was an Austrian visiting Bosnia.
Let’s not forget Vice President Richard Nixon (warning: pdf0