Failed Assassination Attempts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mehmet Ali Agca

On May 13, 1981, Turkish assassin Mehmet Ali Agca shot and wounded Pope John Paul II at St Peter's Square, Vatican City. Agca had just escaped from a Turkish prison for the 1979 murder of a left-wing journalist. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1983 Pope John Paul II visited Agca in prison.

After serving 20 years in an Italian prison, the Pope requested a pardon. Agca was deported to Turkey and was released on January 18, 2010.

Answer: Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas (1936-1988) was a radical feminist and author of the "SCUM Manifesto" which included the revolutionary ideas of overthrowing the government and eliminating the male sex. Solanas met Andy Warhol in the mid 1960s and asked him to produce her play "Up Your Ass". It seems that Warhol may have misplaced the script and Solanas believed that he was trying to steal her work. She bought a gun in 1968 and, on June 3, 1968, attempted to kill Warhol at The Factory, NYC.

Answer: Michael Riccardi

On January 12, 1991, Civil Rights activist Al Sharpton was leading a protest march in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Michael Riccardi arrived at the demonstration with a knife and attempted to stab Sharpton to death. The blow just missed Sharpton's lung and major blood vessels, and he survived to protest another day. Riccardi was sentenced to 15 years for aggravated assault.

He was released in January 2001 after serving ten years.

Answer: Fanny Kaplan

Fanya Yefimovna Kaplan (1890-1918) belonged to the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin's Bolsheviks banned the party and Lenin was viewed as a traitor by the SRP. On August 30, 1918, as Lenin was leaving the Hammer and Sickle Factory in Moscow, Kaplan shot him three times. Lenin survived but Kaplan was caught; she refused to name her accomplices. Due to this incident, the Soviet government reinstated the death penalty and Kaplan was shot to death on September 3, 1918.

Answer: Michael Abram

On December 30, 1999, just two days before the beginning of the new century, Michael Abram scaled the fence of George Harrison's Friar Park Estate near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He threw a statue through the window and then confronted the ex-Beatle with a knife. Harrison was stabbed several times in the chest but survived.

In November, 2000, Abram was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered to a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite stay.

Answer: Violet Gibson

"Picture this:" Rome, Italy 1926 (for Sofia Petrillo fans). An Irish woman and the daughter of Lord Ashbourne (formerly Edward Gibson) was among the crowd on April 7, 1926 as Mussolini walked down the Piazza di Campidoglio in Rome. The woman was Violet Gibson (1876-1956) and she had a revolver hidden in her shawl.

She fired two shots, one just injuring Mussolini's nose. The crowd wanted to hang her, but Mussolini intervened and she spent the rest of her life in an asylum.

Answer: John Hinckley Jr.

If you are old enough, you may remember the name John Hinckley Jr. He is the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. in order to impress Jodie Foster. He fired six shots; one bullet ricocheted and hit Reagan in the chest, wounding him but not severely. On September 10, 2016, after 35 years in a mental institution, he was freed to go to live with his elderly mother in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Answer: Arthur Bremer

Alabama Governor and Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace was at a campaign rally at the Laurel Shopping Center in Laurel, Maryland on May 15, 1972. Unfortunately, so was Arthur Bremer with his .38 revolver. While Bremer's shot did not kill Wallace, it left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Bremer was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 63 (later lowered to 53) years in prison.

He was released from prison on November 9, 2007.

Answer: Claus von Stauffenberg

Here is one assassination attempt that most of the world wished had been successful. German army officer and member of Bavarian nobility, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (1907-1944) led the team in the German Resistance that plotted the assassination of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 in Wolfsschanze, Prussia.

As we know, the plot failed and von Stauffenberg was executed by a firing squad on the following day. The plot was depicted in the 2008 film "Valkyrie".

Answer: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme

One of Charles Manson's devoted followers was Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Although she was not involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, Fromme was operating under Manson's control when she attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975. On the morning of September 5th, Fromme went to Capitol Park in Sacramento, California with a 1911 Colt .45. She shot at Ford but there was no bullet in the chamber. She was arrested, sentenced to life but paroled on August 14, 2009.

Answer: Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry

Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry (1927-1963) was a French Air Force lieutenant colonel and military engineer. On August 22, 1962, in Petit-Clamart, France, Bastien-Thiry attempted to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, after de Gaulle had agreed to accept Algerian independence. No one died as a result of the attempt; that is, no one except Bastien-Thiry who was executed by a French firing squad on March 11, 1963. (See "The Day of the Jackal")

Answer: Marcus Sarjeant

Although I was around in 1981, I don't recall an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II. However, on June 13, 1981, while the Queen rode down The Mall in London to the "Trooping the Color" ceremony, an Englishman named Marcus Sarjeant fired six blank shots at her from a starting pistol.

The Queen was unhurt and Marcus claimed he was inspired by the John Lennon assassination and that he "wanted to be famous". He was prosecuted and sentenced to five years in prison.

Answer: Joseph Paul Franklin

Here we have a serial killer whose crimes spanned the late 1970s to the early 1980s. While Joseph Paul Franklin (1950-2013) was convicted of several murders, he did not succeed in killing Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. Flynt was shot by Franklin in 1978, at the County Courthouse in Lawrenceville, Georgia where Flynt was facing obscenity charges. Flynt was left paralyzed from the waist down. Franklin was executed for multiple murders on November 20, 2013.

Answer: Maxime Brunerie

It was on Bastille Day, i.e., July 14, 2002, on the Champs-Elyse in Paris, France that 25 year old Maxime Brunerie brought a .22 rifle to the parade, hidden in a guitar case, in order to assassinate French President Jacques Chirac. During the parade, Brunerie attempted to fire a shot but was quickly arrested.

His trial began on December 6, 2004 and he was ultimately found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to ten years. He was freed on August 3, 2009.

Answer: John Flammang Schrank

John Flammang Schrank (1876-1943) was born in Bavaria and emigrated to the United States when he was nine years old. He became obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt who was now campaigning under the banner of the Progressive Party. On October 14, 1912, at the Hotel Gilpatrick in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Schrank shot Roosevelt with a .38 caliber Colt revolver. Roosevelt's speech notes prevented the bullet from killing him, but Schrank was arrested and institutionalized until his death.