Cut Short (part I)

These voices were silenced before their time. For this list, we’re taking a look at political and social leaders who had their lives cut short. These are the unexpected deaths that shocked the world, impacted lives, and changed the course of history.

Philip II of Macedon (382 - 336 BC)

The man credited with inventing the political ideology of “divide and conquer,” Philip II was a successful ruler of Macedon. In the autumn of 336BC, Philip was left unprotected while attending his daughter’s wedding, and was killed by one of his bodyguards, Pausanias of Orestis. Though the assassin’s motives are unclear – some historians believe his wife and son Alexander III were involved, while others theorize Pausanias was a wronged lover of Philip’s – the murder allowed for Philip’s son Alexander the Great to ascend to the throne and create one of the largest empires in history.

Malcolm X (1925 - 1965)

As a militant voice of the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X had long been a target of violence and death threats. After Malcolm X’s very public break from the Nation of Islam religious movement, animosity between him and the organization grew. Tensions boiled over during an address in Manhattan on February 21st, 1965, when three men shot and killed the civil rights leader. The Nation took responsibility, and Talmadge Hayer admitted his guilt, but the other two maintained their innocence. And the Civil Rights Movement lost one of its most active leaders.

Benazir Bhutto (1953 - 2007)

Though no longer Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto was still a prominent political figure in 2007 as the first female leader of a Muslim country. On December 27 that year, she was on the campaign trail for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Though she was equipped with a bulletproof vehicle, Bhutto was killed while standing through the sunroof to greet fans when shots rang out and explosives were detonated near the car. Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid took responsibility for Bhutto’s death, which sparked riots and quashed any chance of stability in the region.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (1863 - 1914)

If not for the events that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his name might’ve been just a blip in history. The murder of Ferdinand and his wife on June 28th, 1914 set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the beginning of WWI just one month later. The motive of assassin Gavrilo Princip and his fellow Bosnian-Serb revolutionaries was to break away from Austria-Hungary and form their own republic. The result was a conflict involving all the world’s great economic powers, and one of the deadliest conflicts in history.

John Lennon (1940 - 1980)

The cultural impact of the Beatles is difficult to overstate. The group inspired obsessed fans, including the dangerously infatuated Mark David Chapman. Chapman, once a diehard Beatles fan, had become a born-again Christian and considered Lennon’s comment that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus” blasphemous. Inspired by the anti-phony sentiment in J.D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher in the Rye” and his perception that Lennon was the ultimate hypocrite, Chapman visited The Dakota apartment building where Lennon and Yoko Ono lived on December 8th, 1980 and – after getting his autograph earlier in the day – shot and killed him.