The following are a selection of locations, viewed with Google Earth, where historically someone was murdered, assassinated, executed or otherwise brutally done in. The task is to examine each crime scene for clues to where in the world it is, and then try and deduce the name, not of the killer, but of the famous victim.

The yellow pin denotes the place where the deadly deed was done (so not necessarily where the victim finally expired nor perhaps where their commemorative plaque, if any, is located), and is placed as near as I could establish it by using the available records. The pin marker should generally be accurate to within a few metres and be sufficiently precise to pin-point just one particular historic incident. These are of course modern images and the landscapes, streets and buildings may well have been considerably different when the event occurred. The scales are obviously all different but north is always up.

So get sleuthing, or maybe just make a wild stab in the dark ... which incidentally is how some of these poor souls ended their days.

NB I won't immediately give correct answers here so as not to spoil it for late comers, but will just indicate if someone has aready solved it correctly.

No. 01
..... solved.

No. 02
..... solved

No. 03
..... solved

No. 04
..... solved

No. 05
..... solved

No. 06
..... solved

No. 07
..... solved

No. 08
..... solved

No. 09
..... solved

No. 10
..... solved

No. 11
..... solved

No. 12
..... solved

No. 13
..... solved

No. 14
..... solved

No. 15
..... solved

No. 16
..... solved

No. 17
..... solved

No. 18
..... solved

No. 19
..... solved

No. 20
..... solved

No. 21
..... solved

No. 22
..... solved.

No. 23


No. 24
..... solved

No. 25
..... solved

I think no 2 could be Sarajevo and Franz Ferdinand & wife?

Yup, on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, Franz-Ferdinand and Sophie were shot by Gavrillo Princip in Franz Josef Street, in front of Moritz Schiller's Delicatessen, which was located at the junction of Franz Josef Street and Appel Quay, directly across from the Latinska Bridge.

X marks the spot:

Is No. 07 Mary Queen of Scots?

No. 7... yes Fotheringay Castle, or what little remains of it, where Mary got the chop. She was executed in the middle of the Great Hall, which was located in the outer ward below the keep (the keep was on that conical mound at the west end), although I'm not sure where exactly within the enclosed outer ward the Great Hall was located. But here Mary is, on the temporary scaffold built in the centre of the hall directly in front of the fireplace.

And No. 16 a certain grassy knoll with a patsy in a warehouse nearby?

I'm guessing 17 is Charlton Heston territory. Which means either Moses met a stickier end than we thought or it could be General Gordon?

nordmann wrote:

And No. 16 a certain grassy knoll with a patsy in a warehouse nearby?

I'm guessing 17 is Charlton Heston territory. Which means either Moses met a stickier end than we thought or it could be General Gordon?

Yes, JFK on Elm Street, Dallas, with the book depository on the curve to the north ... although I think I probably put the marker pin just a little too far to the west.

Charlton Heston never played him but yes General Gordon of Khartoum (killed 1885) it is.

PS : that was a tricky one to locate because, while it is well recorded that the official British Govenor's residence was located on the north side of the Embassy compound adjacent to the Blue Nile, the river itself seems to have changed its course quite a bit over the past 150 years.

Badly, but he did.

No 4 is Washington, so I'm guessing Lincoln?

No. 4 is indeed Washington DC, and so yes it's Ford's Theatre where Abe Lincoln met his end in 1865:

I know Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire well as I have good friends who live in a neighbouring village. Not only was it the scene of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots but also (155 years earlier) was the birthplace of Richard of Gloucester.

I’ll guess that No. 24 is Savonarola.

P.S. I’m pretty sure Charlton Heston played both Moses and Charles Gordon. What he didn’t play, however, was the British Governor of the Sudan. Gordon was governor on behalf of the Egyptian khedive and was technically an Ottoman official.

No. 24 ... Savonarola: a very good guess, but wrong. Right city though ... Savonarola was executed only a few hundred meters away and just a couple of decades later.

No. 24 is Brunelleschi's famous dome at Florence Cathedral. One of the de Medici was assassinated there when the pope and his bankers decided a little hostile takeover of Florence was in order and a contract was put out on the leaders of the local mob. They missed their main target Lorenzo who was wounded but survived in a very public "shakedown" during high mass at the cathedral, however little brother Giuliano got it in the neck. The hit-men forgot to plan a quick route back to the papal mob's territory if Plan A didn't work, were quickly apprehended by Lorenzo's generals and were executed, but the two mobs came to a deal later on anyway in which the Florence boss eventually ran both and appointed Giuliano's bastard son as "Papa Nostra" in Roma.

No. 1 has to be the turbulent priest's gaff, surely!

And No. 25 is the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis - once a motel where some womaniser was gunned down, I believe, thereby creating a day off school for generations of children afterwards so was of course "a good thing".

No. 12 had me bugged for a while - I believe it's where Caesar was murdered by Brutus in the infamous Smarties Rebellion when he was accused of nicking three from Brutus's selection box ("ate two, Brutus!"). However the pin is in the old traditional location, I think. In recent years the curia in Pompey's Theatre has been located under a pizzaria about two hundred metres to the west, I thought. Unless it's some other Roman, of course.

Is No. 22 Spencer Perceval? Airey Neave was a little further north, I reckon, and the Members' Lobby is further east of the pin, but then the place has been rebuilt since the assassination of the PM.

No. 21 is John Lennon? That's certainly Central Park in the photo, I think.

No. 24 - Giuliano de' Medici did indeed get it in the neck ... and everywhere else: he was stabbed 19 times and died at the front of the congregation under the dome of the Duomo in 1478.

No. 1 - Thomas Becket, turbulent to the end, was cut down in 1170 in the NW transept of Canterbury cathedral between the door to the cloisters and the steps up to the quire (this was of course in the old cathedral before it was enlarged).

No. 25 - Now the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, it was the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King rented a room with a balcony on the first floor just above and to the right of the entrance door.

No. 12 - Is the site of the Eastern portico of the Curia in Pompey's Theatre. It's now an archaeological dig within the Largo di Torre Argentino area ... and the last I'd heard was they'd thought they'd found the base of a monument that had been raised on the exact spot where JC got it in 44 BC. But the whole area has been rebuilt so many times it's not easy to tell exactly where everything was, although the curved streets to the west suggest that's the site of the semi-circular seats at the other end of the theatre.



No. 22 - Spencer Perceval, shot in 1812 in the entrance lobby of the old House of Commons which was then housed in what had been St Stephen's chapel in the Palace of Westminster, and ran from the corner of Westminster yard down to the Thames, before it all burned down a couple of decades later.



Well done.

And 21? Lennon? (see above)

No. 19 is Banqueting House in Whitehall, but I can't think of a murder there - just an execution for treason carried out under the law and all jolly English and above board.

No 21 - sorry yes, John Lennon shot just outside the main entrance to The Dakota appartment building adjacent to Central Park, New York.

No. 19 - Charlie got the chop outside the third window from the right of the Banqueting House ... and it can't have been all that above board because the regicides were later executed and their heads put on spikes ... including that of Cromwell despite him having by then already died.

Last one before I need to work a bit (damned addictive these).

No. 5 - William Rufus?

No. 5 - Yes William Rufus, or at least that's the traditional site as marked by a stone in the New Forest ... very well done, there wasn't much to go on there.

With regard to No. 03 - I can't think of anyone famous who died on a beach (although there have probably been many) except for Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia who went missing while swimming in 1967. Is that who it is?

I was thinking along the same lines Vizzer but my beached whale was Pompey - except the surrounding countryside looks a little too verdant for Egypt. It's so far up a bird's eye view that it might well have happened sub-litorally literally, though.

I'm having a stab at No. 10 being Henry, king of Scots (aka the dastardly Darnley), as the picture looks very like Edinburgh.

Didn't someone murder Fletcher Christian on a beach? (Pitcairn Island?) I wondered if that was Number 18.

I wonder if one answer is Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh - Lord Darnley? Perhaps another is Kit Marlowe (stabbed just above his right eye) in a tavern in Deptford. But I haven't a clue about Google maps, so I can't take part in this quiz. It's very interesting though, MM.

Crossed posts.

Not Harold Holt ... nor Pompey Magnus.

No. 3 didn't just die on a beach but was killed there, although the attack wasn't entirely unprovoked.

No. 11 is poker-up-the-bum man, Edward Two (though according to some historians the whole thing is a fake and Eddie turned up disguised as a pilgrim at the papal court four years later).

Could No. 3 be Captain Hook then? Sorry, I meant Captain Cook, then? Still looks very European though.

No. 10 is indeed Lord Darnley in what was then Kirk o' Field but is now Chambers Street, his body was found where now is the front of the National Museum of Scotland.

No.3 is James Cook killed on the beach of Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii.

and No.11 is Edward II emprisoned, and probably killed, in his prison cell above the gatehouse to the keep of Berkeley castle.

Is No. 8 the Portuguese king Carlos and his son?

Meles meles wrote:

Not Harold Holt ... nor Pompey Magnus.

No. 3 didn't just die on a beach but was killed there, although the attack wasn't entirely unprovoked.

Oops! Should have remembered it's a murder and executions quiz rather than just an extraordinary deaths quiz.

Okay - I'll go for No. 20 as Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke.

P.S. Meles - would it be possible to fill out the solutions in the opening post so as to make it easier to see what the correct answers are rather than having to scroll up and down each time? This would also be valuable in terms of interest and posterity.

I thought No. 8 would be very difficult, although I suppose Lisbon is fairly distinctive from the air. So yes, it's Carlos I of Portugal, shot in 1908 en route to the royal palace having just crossed the Praça do Comércio.

No. 20 -  Well done Vizzer, the Phoenix Park murders, in Dublin, of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke. It's a big park so it took a fair bit of sleuthing to find the correct spot, which is actually marked on the ground by a small 60cm cross of pebbles set in the grass adjacent to the main road and directly opposite the old vice-regal residence, which is now Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland.



I didn't post the answers against the original pics so as not to spoil it for any late-comers, but we're well over half done now so I'll post them up in the first post.

Meles meles wrote:

I didn't post the answers against the original pics so as not to spoil it for any late-comers

That makes sense.

P.S. You seem to have overlooked Temp's suggestion for No. 18 unless I'm mistaken.

Sorry Temp I did miss your suggestion for no. 18 ... but no it's not Fletcher Christian nor is it Pitcairn Island.

Viz I will post up the answers into the first post in a bit.

No. 15 is almost certainly Paris so I'm going to guess as Henri IV.

No. 15 is indeed Paris and Henry IV, who was stabbed by a Catholic assassin in 1610 when his coach was stopped in the rue de la Ferronnerie by traffic congestion related to the Queen's coronation ceremony.

I've moved the answers down the post for clarity.

That island in number 18 is driving me mad. It's not Saint Helena, is it? Some say Napoleon was poisoned there?

Is that the River Thames in number 6? Too many green bits, though I suppose for an area near an old dockyard. I'm still thinking of the Christopher Marlowe stabbing in Deptford. (I mentioned that yesterday too, but perhaps it was such a daft idea you ignored it out of embarrassment for me, MM!)

LiR has just mentioned Archimedes. Wasn't he murdered in Sicily? Is that number 18? I bet it's not.

I'm not sure if 18 is New Guinea but I know that Michael Rockerfeller disappeared there - I don't know if people are sure whether he drowned or was murdered.

No. 18 - the island isn't St Helena nor is it Sicily (where Archimedes was indeed killed by them bloody Romans) nor New Guinea ... it's quite a bit smaller than any of them, which (the small size of the place) was apparently a consideration for why the victim was there.

No. 6 - isn't Deptford and so isn't Marlowe, but you're certainly thinking along the right lines of an altercation in a bar.

Ah, that small island - is it a Roman exiled on some little rock you could walk round in about five minutes? Who was that one in I, Claudius who got bumped off after a couple of years in rocky exile?

Or is it a French prison?

Temperance wrote:

Ah, that small island - is it a Roman exiled on some little rock you could walk round in about five minutes? Who was that one in I, Claudius who got bumped off after a couple of years in rocky exile?

That's the one ...Planasia, now called Pianosa, the small island off the west coast of the Italian peninsular to where Augustus banished his grandson Postumus Agrippa. Planasia/Pianosa is not only very small (4 sq. miles in area) but is also very flat (the highest point is only 29m above sea level), hence the Roman name, and so you can basically see the whole place from just about anywhere on the island. Postumus was housed at what is now called Villa Agrippa (now ruins) just inland from the beach on the eastern shore, and it was here that he was eventually killed on the orders of Tiberius, immediately after Augustus' death in AD14.

You'd have thought that having the name Postumus he should have realised he was fated never to have a long life.

I'm chuffed to bits I got that and nordmann didn't.

Right, must do something useful now - wasted enough time on Res His for one day.

But this has been an excellent quiz, MM - thank you for devising it.

We need more quizzes!

Here we are, all the pics again but with the answers to date (and now that's all of 'em):

No. 01

Thomas Becket killed in 1170 in the NW transept of Canterbury cathedral, between the door to the cloister and the steps leading to the quire.

No. 02

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie shot in 1914 in front of Moritz Schiller's Delicatessen, which was located at the junction of Franz Josef Street and Appel Quay, directly across from the Latinska Bridge, in Sarajevo.

No. 03

Capt. James Cook killed on the beach of Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, while attempting to kidnap chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu.

No. 04

Abraham Lincoln shot in Ford's Theatre, Washington DC in 1865.

No. 05

William II killed in the New Forest. The commemorative stone reads: "Here stood the oak tree, on which an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell at a stag, glanced and struck King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which he instantly died, on the second day of August, anno 1100."

No. 06

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and favourite of James I was stabbed by a disgruntled army officer, John Felton, who thought Villiers had overlooked him for promotion, in the Greyhound tavern, aka The Spotted Dog, in Portsmouth High Street in 1628.


No. 07

Mary Queen of Scots executed in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle in 1587.

No. 08

Carlos I of Portugal and his son shot as their carriage reached the western end of the Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, 1908.

No. 09


The mud-brick schoolhouse in the little village of La Higuera in Villegrande Province, Bolivia, where Che Guevara was held prisoner and eventually shot on 9 October 1967.


No. 10

In 1567 Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley's stabbed body was found in Kirk o' Field, which is now Chambers Street, Edinburgh.

No. 11

Edward II presumed to have been killed in 1327 in his prison cell, which was located above the gatehouse to the keep of Berkely castle.

No. 12

Julius Caesar stabbed in 44BC in the eastern portico to Pompey's Theatre, now somewhere in the Largo di Torre Argentino area.

No. 13

Holbeche House in Staffordshire where the 1605 Gunpowder plotters made their last stand. Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy were killed by the same bullet as they ran out of the front door (marked by the pin). John and Christopher Wright were also killed although they were shot in the courtyard behind the house. The original house still stands essentially unaltered in layout, and is now a private nursing home.

No. 14

Mahatma Ghandi assassinated in the gardens of Birla House, now Gandhi Smriti, in New Delhi in 1948. The exact spot is marked by a memorial.

No. 15

Henry IV, who was killed in 1610 by a Catholic assassin when his coach was stopped in the rue de la Ferronnerie in Paris by traffic congestion realated to the Queen's coronation ceremony.

No. 16

John F Kennedy shot as his motorcade drove along Elm Street, Dallas, in 1963.

No. 17

General Gordon killed in 1885 by followers of the Mahdi in the Govenor-General's Palace in Khartoum.

No. 18

Planasia, now called Pianosa is the small island off the west coast of the Italian peninsular to where Augustus banished his grandson Postumus Agrippa. The island is not only very small but very flat, hence the Roman name, and so you can just about see the whole place from anywhere on the island. Postumus was housed at what is called Villa Agrippa (now ruins) just inland from the beach on the eastern shore, and it was here that he was eventually killed on the orders of Tiberius, immediately after Augustus' death in AD14.

No. 19
.
Charles I executed in 1649 on a scaffold in front of the third window from the right of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

No. 20

The 1882 Phoenix Park murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke as they walked along the driveway in front of the Vice-Regent's residence in Dublin, now the residence of the President of Ireland.

No. 21

John Lennon shot in 1980 just outside the entrance to The Dakota apartment building, adjacent to Central Park in Manhatten, New York.

No. 22
.
Spencer Perceval PM shot in 1812 in the lobby to the old House of Commons, which was then in the converted St Stephen's Chapel, the entrance of which was in the corner of Old Palace Yard, adjacent to Westminster Hall.

No. 23

The Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling about 15km south-west of Vienna, where in 1889, Rudolf, the 30-year-old Crown Prince of Austria, apparently shot his 17-year-old lover, the Baroness Mary Vetsera, and then committed suicide. It caused a dynastic crisis as well as being a huge scandal which the Imperial family desperately tried to cover up. The first official report said he’d died of an “aneurism of the heart”; then it was suggested that his mind must have been temporarily disturbed when he saw her commit suicide and he then killed himself; then it was put out that maybe it was she that had first shot him, followed by herself; … there were even claims that it was all the work of French secret agents sent by Clemenceau. The Habsburg’s attempts to have the whole uncomfortable matter hushed-up were partly successful in that Rudolf, apparently a suicide and maybe a murderer too, was finally entombed in the Imperial Crypt with full Catholic rites. The young baroness’s body was however rapidly spirited away and secretly buried in the municipal cemetery of a nearby village before any proper examination, autopsy or judicial review could take place.

No. 24

Giuliano de' Medici stabbed while attending mass in the Duomo of Florence in 1478.

No. 25

Martin Luther King, shot in 1968 when he was on the balcony of his room just above and to the right of the front entrance of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (now the Civil Rights Museum).

Well done Temp for getting the island. That was driving me potty trying to guess which Galapagos Island or wherever was that shape and then who died there.

No. 06 is intriguing. The scale is difficult to judge but it looks like a quaint little port town - but where? The green spaces, however, could be deceptive and it could be a large city. If the orientation is North-South then it must be on the west coast of somewhere.

I'll hazard a guess at Sir John Moore who was killed at the Battle of Corunna.

No. 6 - no not Corunna ... quite a bit closer to Blighty actually, and the whole town would usually be described as being on a south coast.

Also remember what I said to Temp when she wondered if it might be Christopher Marlowe in Deptford:

"No. 6 - isn't Deptford and so isn't Marlowe, but you're certainly thinking along the right lines of an altercation in a bar."

'Quite a bit closer to Blighty' - but not actually in Blighty - might suggest somewhere like Jersey. The street layout doesn't seem grid-like enough to be on the continent. And the town of St Helier is on the south coast of Jersey.

Is it St Helier himself - murdered by marauding (drunken) pirates?

Vizzer wrote:

'Quite a bit closer to Blighty' - but not actually in Blighty ....

That's your interpretatation, not mine. But to get to the oaken heart of the matter you can't get much closer to Blighty than Blighty itself, ... so maybe consider the south coast of England rather than the south coast of Jersey. So no, good guess, but its' not St Helier, neither the bloke nor the town.

Thanks for the clues (I have a feeling those remaining will require a few more - especially the one that shows a load of grass and little else!)

No. 6 - after extensive flying over the south coast and zooming in and out like a demented drone - shows itself to be the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham in the Greyhound Inn in Portsmouth (or was it the murder of a greyhound in the Duke of Buckingham Pub in Plymouth?). I hadn't thought of it before as I reckoned ridding the world of Villiers was akin to disease eradication, especially that particular specimen of the parasitic breed. The assassin, Felton, was hanged at Tyburn and then his body sent back to Portsmouth, where it was made a freeman of the city.

Yup, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and favourite of James I was stabbed by a disgruntled army officer, John Felton, who thought Villiers had overlooked him for promotion, in the Greyhound tavern, aka The Spotted Dog, in Portsmouth High Street in 1628.

So much for Vizzer speculating it might be a quaint little seaside town. Here’s a view obliquely over the whole area looking roughly north-west.



The huge Naval dockyards are just out of frame to the north of the Google Earth I'd originally posted – I deliberately cropped them off as the shape of HMS Warrior, HMS Victory and then whatever modern warships were in port when the image was taken, were all far too obvious.

The green area in the foreground is the top end of Southsea Common which extends down to the bottom right (ESE) and has been the stage for numerous Spithead naval reviews, the big D-Day celebrations in 1994, the bicentennial Trafalgar celebrations in 2005 etc, although again I cropped most of this area off. The Google Earth image I posted basically comprises the old medieval/Tudor/Stuart heart of Portsmouth, centred on the High Street and including Portsmouth’s old cathedral, the original docks, and the Old Round Tower on the promontory to the left (west) guarding the entrance to the harbour, from where Henry VIII watched the Mary Rose sink in 1545.

I note that Google Earth puts Buckingham House, now a hotel, as on the other, NW, side of the street – but the real building, the old Greyhound tavern, and the one with the official plaque, is directly opposite on the SE side, and was itself re-registered with the post office as Buckingham House in 1953 when it became a private residence. I don't know if this is a Google Earth error or just that the modern hotel has simply borrowed the name from the old building opposite -  but the original 17th century tavern building, the Greyhound/Old Spotted Dog, although re-fronted sometime in the 18th century, is still standing.

Only four remaining, here they are again with some clues.

No. 09 - An iconic posterboy.
... now solved

No. 13 - Who attempts to dry wet gunpowder in front of an open fire? But they did survive that bit of folly, only to die in a shoot out when the sheriff’s posse arrived.


No. 14 - Three people of this surname have been assassinated, although this one, the first to die, was not directly related to either of the other two.


No. 23 - This killing caused a dynastic crisis which led directly to another assassination which has already featured in this quiz.

And here was me thinking No. 9 was in deepest Shropshire!  

This is one of Ireland's more famous sons - gunned down in La Higuera, Bolivia. Ernesto "Shay" Guevera (or Lynch). I met his son, also called Ernesto, at a folk music festival in Cuba. Not bad on the penny whistle and knew his way around The Walls Of Limerick reel.

That's the lad ... the pin marks the mud-brick schoolhouse in the little village of La Higuera in Villegrande Province, Bolivia, where he was held prisoner and eventually shot on 9 October 1967. It's now a small museum/shrine, although I can't think they get many visitors being so far out in the sticks.

By the way Nordmann, I was surprised you didn't recognise No. 20 as Phoenix Park in Dublin.