3. Do not mess with this comrade
Not many can say that they know people want to assassinate them. But Leon Trotsky, who was in a feud with Stalin, knew it was always in the cards as his rival had already made numerous attempts even before 1939. The first more serious attempt was in 1940 when Leon was in Mexico and a team of hitmen fired over 200 bullets in the house he was staying in with his wife. Somehow, both of them survived that. But there was a backup plan as Stalin really wanted his political opponent out of the picture.
A man named Ramon Mercader managed to infiltrate Leon Trotsky’s staff, and posed as a diplomat. Gaining the trust of the people around the man, Mercader managed to get inside Leon’s compound with an ice pick, with no trouble at all. He managed to stab Leon in the head, the weapon reaching about 2 inches inside his skull, but his screams of pain alerted the guards. Despite being fatally injured, Leon held Mercader there until the guards arrived.
Despite dying the following day, Leon somehow evaded death way too many times as he was alive and he also managed to get justice for himself as his murderer served 20 years in jail. If anything, his vindication came in the form of Mercader dying in prison, haunted by Leon’s screams and fearing that he was waiting to get revenge in the afterlife.
2. Exploring gone wrong
Ferdinand Magellan is known for the impressive feat of sailing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific one. Yet, he died in 1521 when he attempted to sail around the world, partially due to all of the mishaps along the way, but also due to poor planning. Even so, Magellan was very hard to kill and survived a lot of events that would generally kill a person.
Firstly, the man survived through an attempted mutiny but lost one of the five ships he set out on his journey. Afterward, due to poor planning and underestimating just how big the Pacific Ocean is, the food on the ships started to run out, the water turned putrid and a lot of the men got scurvy. When they finally hit shore almost all were dead, but Magellan decided to thank God for helping him find land by converting the locals to Christianity. Yet, his version of converting included violence, canons and muskets, and no hymn books.
The reef around the island made the ship’s cannons useless as it made the target out of reach, so Magellan and his remaining men marched on the shore using only upper body armor. This was a bad move as the indigenous people saw their lower body was unprotected and aimed lower. Everyone but Magellan fled, but the man, despite being attacked by spears and hit with poisoned darts, kept on fighting. When he finally collapsed, a native man stabbed his face with a spear which enranged the sailor who killed him with his lance. Magellan found his death at the hands of a dozen natives who attacked him.
You would think that someone who survived a revolt, starvation, poison, and spears would know better than to fight a dozen armed men, while fatally wounded. Alas, he didn’t and died because he could not let go of his idea. Out of the 250 men who left on the voyage, only 20 completed it and made it back home. Yet, between them all, Magellan was the only one that was very hard to kill.
1. 50 Assassinations Attempts
Unless you are familiar with European history, King Zog of Albania will be someone completely new to you. At his time, he was pretty well known in Albania and not a lot of his people liked him, due to his predisposition for luxury when most of the country was dirt-poor. He was not seen well inside his country due to this, and the fact that he killed his political opponents, but in the rest of Europe he was not widely accepted: the monarchy in Albany was relatively new and young and many of the old houses did not recognize it as legitimate.
Yet, King Zog managed what other monarchs couldn’t: to service countless assassination attempts. Starting with one in the 1920s, when the man was shot and survived, one of the most known attempts on his life was in 1931 when he left the Vienna State Opera House and was shot. He survived this attempt too, took a few moments to compose himself, and left for the parliament house to hold a speech.
It is said that his life had been difficult, he stopped going out in public and had his family take charge of the military and also had them taste his food. Over the course of his life, and his exile, he has survived over 50 attempts on his life and died of natural causes in 1961. You cannot beat him when it comes to cheating death.
