Famous assassins and victims: a. What was the name of the Swedish Prime Minister assassinated while taking a stroll in Stockholm in 1986? b. In 1968, Martin Luther King was killed by whom? c. Which person, in 1901, assassinated President Wm. McKinley?

These three separate acts of violence, though decades apart, altered the course of history in their respective nations. The 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in Stockholm remains a profound national trauma. Palme was shot at close range while walking home from a movie theater with his wife, foregoing the protection of bodyguards in an effort to live an ordinary life. The brazen and public nature of the attack on a leader known for his advocacy for social justice and international peace shocked the nation. Despite a conviction that was later overturned and decades of investigation, the case officially remains unsolved, leaving a lasting scar on Sweden.

In the United States, the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, was a devastating blow to the civil rights movement. King was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers. The assassin, James Earl Ray, was an escaped fugitive who was apprehended after a two-month international manhunt. Ray later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. King's death sparked riots in more than 100 American cities and is remembered as a pivotal and tragic moment in the struggle for racial equality.

The third American president to be assassinated was William McKinley, who was shot in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He was greeting the public when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who viewed McKinley as a symbol of oppression, shot him twice in the abdomen at point-blank range. Initially, the president appeared to be recovering, but gangrene developed from the wound, and he died eight days later. Czolgosz was quickly tried, convicted, and executed for the murder. McKinley's assassination led Congress to officially charge the Secret Service with the responsibility of protecting presidents.