Assassinations

Article by Alex Martin. Edited by Hannah Lyons. Additional research by Helen Midgley.

To be quite honest, I had no idea what to write for this article. As with my previous article ideas, I was deep in thought trying to come up with a novel list of historical events or trends to flippantly write about. In my search for ideas I came across a brief article about a man named Chris Cavanaugh, who after once beating cancer unfortunately succumbed to the disease the second time around. Chris Cavanaugh died before he was thirty. This made me stop thinking about unimportant things like the nature of man and the accumulated history of human action and instead I headed to the pub.

However the date was the 31st of April 2011, and only a day later the media was bursting with the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The world’s ‘most wanted’ figure had been hunted down and shot in the face.[1] This assassination has inspired me to find the odd and the interesting assassinations that have happened throughout the past. There will be no Martin Luther King’s or Abraham Lincoln’s here, their deaths are frankly pedestrian compared to the others you will find below...

The First Assassination

King Eglon of Moab was said to have ruled over the Israelites during the time of the book of Judges. Allegedly he was a grossly fat, cruel, unclean and greedy man. Ehud, the judge sent by God to free the Israelites from the oppression they were suffering, tricked the corpulent ruler by stabbing him through the gut when offering his tribute. Legend has it that faeces rather than blood or guts spilled out of his body. This in turn led his servants to believe that the unhygienic king was simply relieving himself rather than dying slowly in his own filth.

The Assassination that might have happened...

Demetrius Zvonimir was an eleventh century Croatian King; he suffered the unfortunate political problem of straddling the east-west Christian church schism. The Presbyter of Dolcea claimed that in 1089 the Pope, on behalf of the Byzantine Emperor, asked for his aid against the Turkish. Zvonimir’s nobility and soldier refused and so he was killed. More reliable sources claim that he died of natural causes, yet like many issues from this period, the lack of evidence leaves the question unresolved.

The Assassination that never happened...

American President Zachary Taylor died on July 9th 1850. He had contracted a serious stomach illness that has still never been properly diagnosed. At the time a strain of cholera was suspected, but symptoms also point towards dysentery. Some have even claimed it was the odd meal of cherries, pickles and milk he had during the Independence Day celebrations that led to his untimely death. However in 1991 a retired humanities Professor, Clara Rising, suspected that he had been deliberately poisoned by arsenic. In an attempt to prove her theory she convinced both the living relatives of Zachary Taylor and the Jefferson County Kentucky Coroner to exhume and examine the body. Strangely, one of the officials ensuring that the remains were respected was a direct descendant of Taylor’s presidential opposition Lewis Cass. When the remains were examined there was no evidence of arsenic poisoning of any kind.

The Assassination of an Assassin

On November 22nd 1963 John F Kennedy was famously shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. Two days later the local Dallas Nightclub owner Jack Ruby – a man with minor mob connections – walked out of his car and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the abdomen. Oswald died immediately. The unstable and emotionally fragile man claimed he did it to both rehabilitate Dallas in the eyes of Americans and so that Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t have to go through the emotional trauma of the trial. Nevertheless, much evidence points to a spur of the moment decision; Ruby had left his dog in the car and had been at work that morning. He was also taking the now illegal drug Phenmetrazine, an appetite suppressant that is similar to speed. Since the event conspiracy nuts have been spewing out various theories as to what might have actually happened. (Unfortunately their leader Donald Trump was only seventeen and they came across looking like half crazed pseudo scientists with no life.)

The Fictional Assassination

Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been considered by many to be the best work of fiction in the English language, perhaps even, ever. Here assassination is not only is integral to the plot, it is also a key theme. Literary critics, authors, linguists psychologists, psychiatrists and feminists have studied and debated the various meanings and themes within the play, yet none as hotly or as lengthy as the debate regarding Hamlets hesitation to murder his Uncle in revenge. Some claim the theme of ‘revenge’ is a tool to portray the deeper meaning of the darker impulses of the human psyche. No one would blame Hamlet for exacting his revenge, but does Hamlet’s own personal morality against cold exacting assassination block him from fulfilling his personal desire to avenge his Father’s death? Many debate this, whilst others claim this theme was merely a plot device to lengthen the story.

The Hilarious assassination of the self

Success is rarely funny; few sitcoms focus on the rich and powerful. More often than not it is the lovable loser or the scrappy underdog that we can laugh with/at. The same applies to the murder of the innocent, which is even funnier when the assassin kills himself. For example, the head of the Iranian state offered money for the death of Salman Rushdie after the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses. In 1989 Hezbollah tried to blow the author up, however Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh failed to prime the bomb properly and it went off prematurely, killing himself. The more recent failed Stockholm bombing, where Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly also prematurely blew himself up without being able to seriously harm the innocent, is another example. Further back in time we have the warehouse painter Richard Lawrence. He attempted to kill then President Andrew Jackson but failed to properly fire his flintlock pistols, even from point blank range. Lawrence was then beaten half to death by the sixty eight year old President. Luckily for Lawrence he didn’t disappear in a poof of pink mist; he was only incarcerated until his death. (For more genuine ‘suicide bombing hilarity’ and the occasional shot of the University of Sheffield see the Film Four Lions.) 

Ordinarily I would try to come to some sort of conclusion or synthesis here, but frankly I can’t be bothered. All this research and articulation of needless death perpetrated by a system that a great deal of people support has tired me out. All I can hope is that one day this article is read as a curiosity to help try to explain why, in a world where a regular guy like Chris Cavanaugh from Seattle can’t make it passed thirty, we allow so much needless violence. I look forward to the day when we look upon violence as we now look upon cannibalism. Until then I say go to the pub buy a drink and be glad you are luckier than Chris Cavanaugh.

[1] Until he died

*****

The assassination of King Eglon of Moab was documented in the Bible. In the King James Bible version, in Judges Chp 3 Verses 21-22, the description is stark:

“And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly:

And the shaft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.”

King Demetrius Zvonimir of Croatia was crowned on 8 October 1076 by a representative of Pope Gregory VII: throughout his reign he was allied with the papacy and introduced the Gregorian reforms.

Zvonimir’s death signalled the fall of the royal powers in Croatia.

President Zachary Taylor was born in Virginia in 1784. In 1849, he became the twelfth president of the United States but he would die in office the following year.

Taylor was a slave-owning president (owning 100 slaves). This made him appealing to Southern voters. Taylor had a long career in the military – and therefore was a staunch nationalist – made him appealing to Northern voters. Taylor won 47.4% of the popular vote.

Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) killed President John F. Kennedy on the 22nd November 1963 in Dallas Texas although he was not tried because he was shot as he was transferred by the police to the county jail.

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