133 BC Tiberius Gracchus murdered by mob
The tribune Tiberius Gracchus is murdered by a mob which includes Roman senators

121 BC Gaius Graccus murdered by mob
The tribune Gaius Gracchus is murdered by an armed group, led by a consul, after which 3000 of his supporters are rounded up and executed

44 BC Shock on Ides of March
On March 15, the Ides of March, Julius Caesar is stabbed to death during a meeting of the senate

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

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

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

1306 Robert de Bruce is king of Scots
After the murder of his rival, in a church in Dumfries, Robert de Bruce is crowned king of Scots at Scone

1346 Murder ends Hindu rule in Kashmir
Udiana Deva, the last Hindu ruler of Kashmir, is murdered by his Muslim prime minister

1610 French king murdered in Paris street
Henry IV is assassinated in a Paris street by a Roman Catholic, François Ravaillac

1792 Swedish king shot
The Swedish king Gustavus III is assassinated at a midnight masquerade in Stockholm – an event later dramatized by Verdi

1792 Massacre in Paris
During four September days, thugs are encouraged to massacre some 1400 aristocrats and priests held in Paris prisons

1793 Marat assassinated
25-year-old Charlotte Corday gains access to prominent republican Jean-Paul Marat and stabs him in his bath

1793 Terror in France
The Terror begins in republican France, with executions rising to more than 3000 in December

1794 Danton to the guillotine
Robespierre and St Just succeed in sending Danton and his faction to the guillotine in April

1794 Robespierre to the guillotine
Robespierre and his faction go to the guillotine in July, in the final bloodletting of the Terror

1811 Massacre of guests in Cairo
All but one of 300 Mameluke guests are assassinated during an entertainment by Muhammad Ali in Cairo

1812 British prime minister assassinated
The British prime minister, Spencer Perceval, is assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham

1830 Sucre assassinated
Sucre is assassinated on his journey home to Quito from a congress in Bogotá

1844 Mormon leaders lynched
The Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, and his brother are killed by an armed mob in Nauvoo

1848 Pope's right-hand man assassinated
The prime minister of the papal states, Pellegrino Rossi, is assassinated in Rome

1865 Lincoln assassinated in playhouse
On a visit to a Washington theatre, Lincoln is assassinated in his box by John Wilkes Booth

1865 Ku Klux Klan founded
The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is founded at Pulaski, in Tennessee, on Christmas Eve

1867 Emperor Maximilian shot
Maximilian, the emperor of Mexico, and two of his generals are shot after being surrounded and captured at Querétaro

1876 Atrocities by bashibazouks
Turkish irregular soldiers, the ferocious bashibazouks, massacre some 15,000 Bulgarian civilians

1881 Tsar assassinated
Russia's reforming tsar, Alexander II, is killed by hand-made grenades thrown at his carriage in St Petersburg

1881 Garfield assassinated
US president James Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railway station, and dies two months later

1882 Phoenix Park murders
Irish chief secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and a colleague are assassinated in Phoenix Park in Dublin

1887 Lenin's brother executed
Lenin's elder brother Alexander, while still a student, is executed for his part in a plot to assassinate the tsar, Alexander III

1890 Wounded Knee Creek
Hundreds of Sioux Indians are killed by US troops in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek

1900 King of Italy assassinated
Humbert I, the king of Italy, is assassinated by an Italian-American anarchist, Gaetano Bresci

1901 McKinley assassinated
President McKinley is assassinated by an anarchist when visiting the Pan-American exhibition in Buffalo

1908 Portuguese king and son assassinated
The king of Portugal, Carlos I, and his heir, Luis Filipe, are shot as they ride in an open carriage in Lisbon

1911 Stolypin assassinated
The Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin is assassinated in a Kiev theatre

1914 June 28 Archduke assassinated in Sarajevo
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip

1916 Rasputin murdered
Three members of the Russian imperial family assassinate the influential charlatan Grigory Rasputin

1922 Stringent measures against IRA
The Irish Free State takes stringent measures against rebel terrorism, making possession even of a pistol a capital offence

1922 Collins killed in ambush
After Michael Collins is killed in an ambush, William Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins emerge as leaders of the Irish Free State

1928 Mexico's president assassinated
Alvaro Obregón, the leading figure in Mexico's anti-clerical revolution, is shot by a Roman Catholic assassin

1931 Irgun founded in Palestine
Irgun, a new Jewish paramilitary group, is set up by Haganah commanders frustrated by the older organization's policies

1934 Hitler orders death of Roehm
Adolf Hitler visits his SA commander, Ernst Roehm, in his hotel before having him shot

1934 Kirov assassinated
Sergei Kirov, head of the party in Leningrad, is assassinated in his office, giving Stalin the pretext for his first massive purge

1940 Stern Gang
Avraham Stern forms the Stern Gang, a new Jewish terrorist group in Palestine and an offshoot of Irgun

1940 Trotsky assassinated
An assassin sent by Stalin kills the exiled Trotsky in his home in Mexico City

1942 Shamir heads Stern gang
Yitzhak Shamir becomes leader of the terrorist Stern gang in Palestine

1942  May 27 Heydrich assassinated
Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded by Free Czech agents parachuted in from Britain

1943 Begin leads Irgun
Future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin becomes leader of the underground terrorist group Irgun

1944 July 20 Plot fails to kill Hitler
Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes death from a bomb placed by Claus von Stauffenberg

1946 King David Hotel bombed
Irgun terrorists detonate a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people

1947 Aung San assassinated
33-year old Aung San, prime minister of Burma, and six of his ministers are assassinated during a cabinet meeting

1948 Gandhi assassinated
Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated at a Delhi prayer meeting by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse

1948 Bernadotte assassinated
Jewish terrorists, opposed to the partition of Palestine, murder the UN peacemaker Folke Bernadotte

1948 Terrorism in Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood carries out acts of terrorism against the Egyptian authorities and British troops

1951 Abdullah of Jordan assassinated
King Abdullah of Jordan is assassinated on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

1952 Mau Mau terrorize Kenya
An outbreak of terrorism in Kenya is orchestrated by a secret Kikuyu organization, the Mau Mau

1954 FLN fights for Algerian independence
A radical manifesto and acts of terrorism alert the world to the emergence of the FLN, committed to independence for Algeria

1954 Muslim attempt on Nasser's life
Nasser escapes an assassination attempt by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood

1956 Nicaraguan dictator assassinated
Anastasio Somoza is assassinated on a visit to Panama, but the dictatorship of Nicaragua remains in his family

1958 Arafat founds Al-Fatah
Yasser Arafat and others in Kuwait found Al-Fatah, a secret organization advocating armed resistance against Israel

1958 King of Iraq murdered
The king of Iraq, Faisal II, is murdered in Baghdad in a coup led by Abdul Karim Qassim

1959 Bandaranaike assassinated
Solomon Bandaranaike is assassinated by a Buddhist monk after only three years as prime minister of Sri Lanka

1959 Hutu atrocities against Tutsis
Rwanda suffers the first nationwide outbreak of Hutu violence against Tutsis

1960 Death squads and guerrillas in Guatemala
Guatemala is terrorized by government-linked death squads and emergent guerrilla groups

1961 Trujillo assassinated
Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic for the past 30 years, is killed by a machine-gun attack on his car

1961 Berlin Wall
The East German government erects the Berlin Wall to prevent an exodus of its citizens

1963 Kennedy assassinated
President Kennedy is shot in a motorcade driving through downtown Dallas, in Texas

1963 Suspected Kennedy assassin is shot
Chief suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is shot by night-club owner Jack Ruby just two days after the assassination of President Kennedy

1963 Tutsis massacred
An invasion of Rwanda by Tutsi guerrillas prompts the first major Hutu massacre of Tutsis

1965 Malcolm X assassinated
Black activist and convert to Islam Malcolm X is assassinated when giving a speech in the Audubon Ballroom in New York

1966 Liu and Deng denounced
Communist leaders Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are attacked in China's Cultural Revolution as the biggest and worst 'capitalist roaders'

1968 Martin Luther King assassinated
US civil rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by escaped convict James Earl Ray

1968 Robert Kennedy assassinated
Robert Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles

1969 Terrorism by Provisional IRA
The Provisional IRA reintroduces terrorism to northern Ireland after Protestants attack a civil rights march

1970 Quebec minister murdered
A Quebec government minister, Pierre Laporte, is murdered by the Front de Libération du Québec

1972 Tutsis slaughter Hutus in Burundi
In an orgy of ethnic slaughter in Burundi, Tutsis klll some 100,000 Hutus

1972 Terrorist attack on Israeli athletes
Eleven Israeli athletes are killed by Palestinian 'Black September' terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games

1978 Moro shot by Red Brigades
Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is abducted and assassinated by the terrorist Red Brigades

1978 Sandinistas take 1000 hostages
Sandinista guerrillas make a surprise attack on the National Palace in Nicaragua, taking more than 1000 people hostage

1979 Mountbatten murdered by IRA
Lord Mountbatten is killed by an IRA bomb that explodes on his boat in the bay of Donegal

1979 Saddam Hussein terrorizes Iraq
Saddam Hussein begins a reign of terror in Iraq, reading out at a meeting the names of fellow Ba'athists who are to be taken out and shot

1979 US embassy seized in Tehran
Supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini seize the US embassy in Tehran, taking hostage 66 US citizens

1980 Archibishop assassinated in San Salvador
Archbishop Oscar Romero, an exponent of liberation theology, is killed as he celebrates Mass in San Salvador

1981 Reagan wounded
President Reagan is shot outside a hotel in Washington by John W. Hinckley Jr, but survives

1981 Pope survives assassination attempt in Rome
A Turkish assailant in St Peter's Square in Rome shoots and seriously wounds John Paul II

1981 Sadat killed by Muslim terrorists
Muslim terrorists assassinate Anwar el-Sadat, in response to his peace agreement with Israel

1982 Hezbollah active in Lebanon
Hezbollah emerges in Lebanon as an Iranian-sponsored resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of the southern part of the country

1983 Aquino assassinated
Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino is assassinated at Manila International Airport

1984 Sikhs seize Golden Temple
Sikh rebels, demanding an independent Punjab, seize the Golden Temple in Amritsar

1984 CIA mines Nicaragua's harbours
The CIA covertly arranges for mines to be laid in Nicaragua's harbours

1984 Mrs Gandhi assassinated
Indira Gandhi is assassinated in Delhi by members of her Sikh bodyguard, in retaliation for the desecration of the Golden Temple

1985 Rainbow Warrior blown up
French agents blow up Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour

1986 Swedish prime minister assassinated
Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is killed in a Stockholm street in an unsolved murder

1987 Hamas founded to resist Israel
Hamas (acronym in Arabic for 'Movement for Islamic Resistance') is founded in the occupied territories to lead armed resistance against Israel

1988 PLO renounces terrorism
Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, declares that the organization renounces 'terrorism in all its forms'

1988 Al-Qaeda
Osama bin Laden's involvement in the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan leads to his development of al-Qaeda

1988 Lockerbie air disaster
A terrorist bomb brings down flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland

1991 Bin Laden moves to Sudan
Expelled from his own country, Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden moves to Sudan where he continues to develop al-Qaeda

1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassinated
Rajiv Gandhi is killed near Chennai, during an election campaign, by a suicide bomber on behalf of Tamil militants

1991 Hutu youths trained to attack Tutsis
Hutu youth militias, known as the Interahamwe, are formed in Rwanda to spearhead attacks on Tutsis

1993 Hutu president of Burundi assassinated
Melchior Ndadaye, the first Hutu president of Burundi, is killed by Tutsis within months of his election

1994 Genocide preached in Rwanda
The Hutu government in Rwanda preaches genocide against Tutsis

1994 Rwandan president's plane shot down
The Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, dies when his plane is shot down

1994 Burundi president in Rwanda plane disaster
Cyprian Ntayamira, the second Hutu president of Burundi, dies in the crash of the president of Rwanda's plane

1994 Death of Rwandan president sparks genocide
The assassination of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana sparks the outbreak of genocide

1994 Rwanda genocide
As many as 800,000 people die, most of them slashed to death with machetes, in three months of genocide in Rwanda

1994 Leading Mexican politicians assassinated
Two leading members of Mexico's ruling party, Luis Donaldo Colosio and José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, are assassinated

1995 Explosion in Oklahoma City
A massive bomb destroys federal buildings in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people

1995 Rabin assassinated
Yitzhak Rabin, after addressing a mass rally for peace in Tel Aviv, is killed by an Israeli assassin

1996 Canary Wharf bomb
An IRA bomb at Canary Wharf shatters the fifteen-month ceasefire achieved after the Downing Street Declaration

1996 Hostages seized in Lima
Tupac Amaru guerrillas take 460 guests hostage at the Japanese ambassador's Christmas party in Lima, Peru

1997 Real IRA emerges
The Real IRA, a splinter group of the Provisional IRA, declares its commitment to a continuing campaign of violence

1998 US embassies attacked in east Africa
224 deaths in simultaneous attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are linked to al-Qaeda

1998 Bomb kills 26 in Omagh
The Real IRA kills 26 people and injures about 200 with a bomb planted in Omagh, in northern Ireland

1998 US retaliates against Al-Qaeda
US cruise missiles attack al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical factory in Khartoum

1999 Sadiq al-Sadr is assassinated
Moderate Shiite cleric Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and two of his sons are assassinated in the Iraqi city of Najaf

1999 Russians back in Chechnya
The Russian army returns to Chechnya after Islamic militants commit acts of terrorism

2000 Terror attack on US warship
Suicide bombers kill 17 crew members of the destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbour

2001 Lockerbie bomber convicted
The Scottish Court in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan, Al-Megrahi, of responsibility for the Pan-Am Lockerbie bomb

2001 Royal massacre in Nepal
Crown Prince Dipendra kills nine members of his own royal family at the court of Nepal

2001 Kabila assassinated
Laurent Kabila, the president of the Congo, is assassinated in a failed coup attempt

2001 Massoud fatally wounded
Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, is fatally wounded in an attack by two suicide bombers

2001 September 11 – or 9/11
Four hijacked planes are used in a massive September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington

2001 Anthrax attacks in USA
Anthrax attacks, in the form of letters carrying the bacteria posted to journalists and politicians, begin in the USA

2001 War on Terrorism
Describing September 11 as an act of war, President Bush retaliates with a 'War on Terrorism'

2001 Shoe bomber foiled
UK terrorist Richard Reid tries to bring down a Paris-Miami flight but fails to light the exposive in his shoe

2002 Fortuyn murdered in Hilversum
Controversial Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated outside a a radio station in Hilversum

2002 Bali nightclub bombs
Terrorists detonate bombs in two crowded nightclubs in the Bali resort of Kuta, killing 202 people

2002 Chechen rebels in Moscow theatre
Chechen terrorists take hostage the entire audience of a Moscow theatre in an atrocity resulting in the death of more than 150 people

2002 Osama bin Laden vanishes
In spite of a massive military operation, the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden escapes US pursuit in Afghanistan

2003 Dindić assassinated
Zoran Dindić, the prime minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade

2003 Swedish foreign minister assassinated
Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anna Lindh, is stabbed in a Stockholm department store and dies the following day

2004 Terrorist attacks on Madrid trains
Bombs explode simultaneously on several commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush hour, killing 190 people

2004 Children taken hostage in Beslan
Chechen terrorists take an entire school hostage, in Beslan in southern Russia, resulting in more than 300 deaths

2005 Lebanon car bomb kills Hariri
Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri is killed when a massive bomb is detonated as his car passes in Beirut

2005 Terrorist bombs in London
Four English suicide bombers cause 52 deaths on London's transport system during the morning rush hour

2005 Police mistake Brazilian for London terrorist
A Brazilian citizen, Jean Charles de Menezes, is killed on the London underground by police mistaking him for a terrorist

2005 IRA declares end to armed conflict
The Provisional IRA announces a formal end to armed conflict and orders units to dump all their weapons

2005 Renewal of terrorist bombing in Bali
Just three years after the first attack, suicide bombers kill more than 25 people in the same Balinese town of Kuta

2006 Hamas controls Palestinian parliament
Hamas, defined in many countries as a terrorist organization, wins the majority of seats in elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council

2006 ETA declares ceasefire
The terrorist organization ETA declares what it says will be a permanent ceasefire in its campaign for Basque independence

2006 Israeli corporal taken hostage
Hamas militants take hostage an Israeli corporal, provoking a new Israeli military campaign against Gaza

2006 Terrorist bombs in Bombay
A series of coordinated terrorist bombs explode on trains during the crowded evening rush hour in Mumbai (Bombay)

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict reignited
Hezbollah takes two Israeli soldiers hostage, provoking the renewal of air and rocket warfare on the Israel-Lebanon border