Julius Caesar 44 BC: A friendly food fight in the Forum canteen turned nasty when cutlery came into play and Caesar ended up with a fish knife in his back. Henceforth only cardboard knives and forks were allowed in communal catering facilities. Edward Gibbon identifies this moment as the beginning of the nanny state and the decline of Rome.
Abraham Lincoln 1865: Shooter John Wilkes Booth was about to star in a play where he shoots a president in a theatre. The judge let him off with a warning to "go easy on the method acting".
John F Kennedy 1963: JFK was in a friendly race with Martin Luther King to see who'd be first to be shot in some hostile southern state. Being African-American, Dr King had to wait another five years for his turn, due to the notorious Jim Crow assassination discrimination.
Winston Churchill 1965: The 90-year-old elder statesman was all set for another day of smoking cigars and polishing off a bottle or two of gin when a mysterious 75-year-old assassin slipped into his room with a cyanide capsule. But when the massive manhunt started it was too late, as Adolf Hitler was already on a plane back to Argentina.
John Lennon 1980: Shooter Mark Chapman was arrested immediately, which meant he couldn't be present in person to accept the NRA award for Best Music Critic.
Ronald Reagan 1981: Reagan was affectionately known as the "Weekend at Bernie's President" after being shot dead by John Hinckley. His corpse waved at ecstatic crowds everywhere he went for the next eight years. He struck up an instant rapport with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who had been dead and embalmed since 1967.
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