ONE OF MANY CRAZY ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
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THE Salisbury case was shocking, but the killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978 involved an even more offbeat murder method. Markov, above, had been living in Britain working for the BBC when, on September 7, he walked across London’s Waterloo Bridge and waited at a bus stop.
Suddenly he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his right thigh and looked round to see a man
AFTER communist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro came to power in 1959,
US intelligence agency the CIA bungled a series assassinate of attempts to him – and many sound like they could be in Bond movies.
Plots to poison his trademark cigars failed as did one to deliver exploding ones to him. Likewise, attempts to cripple him infected with an scuba diving-suit and blow him booby-trapped up with seashells came to nothing.
And a plan to poison him using a hypodermic needle hidden in a pen was also botched.
In fact it’s reckoned that Castro, who lived to the age of 90, survived more than 600 his life. schemes to end The leader, above, once said: “If surviving assassination attempts were an
Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.” with an umbrella hurrying away into a taxi.
Markov soon developed a fever and died in hospital four days later.
An autopsy found a metal pellet buried in his leg containing the deadly toxin ricin. It had been injected from the end of the umbrella.
It’s thought Markov had been targeted by Kgb-aided agents after criticising the communist regime in Bulgaria. But the culprits were never caught. tried to kill DURING World War Two, Nazi agents Minister Winston famously sweet-toothed Prime chocolate bars. Churchill, below, using exploding explosives with The bomb-makers coated their then packed it a thin layer of rich dark chocolate, and planned to in expensive-looking wrapping used by the deliver the treats to the dining room war cabinet. was foiled by But Adolf Hitler’s dastardly plot chocs and made British spies, who discovered the its way into the sure the confectionery never found premier’s snacks.