Luigi Lucheni

Born Louis Lucheni on 22 April 1873, he grew up Italian, drifting and rootless. Somewhere along the way he latched onto anarchism — the fashionable radicalism of the dispossessed — and decided a spectacular act would give his life meaning. He sharpened a file, stalked the Empress in Geneva, and drove it into her chest. She walked on for a few minutes before collapsing. He was caught immediately, tried, and imprisoned. On 19 October 1910, he hanged himself in his cell, having spent twelve years as the man who killed a woman because she was famous.