5 Absurdly Hard to Kill Historical Figures

1. Andrew Jackson: 
The 7th president of USA got acquainted with life-threatening situations early. As a teenager, he joined the revolutionary war, and survived mistreatment by British captors. 

As an adult, he got into the dangerous habit of duelling, and continued even during his presidency. Jackson reportedly survived over a hundred duels, resulting in a body riddled with bullet wounds. 

In 1835, while walking in Washington, he was attacked by a man. The would-be-assassin aimed a pistol at him, which misfired. He took out a second pistol which also misfired. Jackson, 67 at the time, then took his cane and beat the man into submission. The pistols fired properly in all later tests.  

2. Gabriel García Moreno: 
The tough Ecuadorian was elected as president three different times. In 1875, while leaving the cathedral in Quito, he was attacked by a group of assassins. The leader of the gang, Faustino Rayo, attacked him with a machete while his comrades fired at the president. Moreno was slashed on his head and neck, and lost his left arm and right hand.

But he had to be shot six more times and slashed fourteen more times to be brought to the ground. Before dying, he wrote on the ground in his own blood, "God does not die." 

3. King Zog I:
The king of Albania reportedly survived over 55 assassination attempts. The constant attacks ended up giving him a rather nonchalant attitude about the whole thing.

In one instance, while shot and bleeding, he sat down on his desk and continued to do office work.

In another one, an assassin jumped into his car suddenly. Before the killer could do anything, the king pulled out his own gun and simply shot him.

Surviving all attempts on his life, King Zog died of natural causes at the age of 65. 

4. Grigori Rasputin:
Rasputin was Tsar Nicholas II's most trusted man, and hated by the masses. 

In 1914, he was stabbed by a woman so forcefully that his stomach opened up wide. But he healed completely.

In 1916, some nobles conspired to kill him at a party. He was served a cake laced with enough poison to kill 5 men, but he ate it without any visible effect. Becoming impatient, a noble shot him in the back and Rasputin fell over. After everyone left, one man came back to get his coat and saw Rasputin slowly getting up. The conspirators chased him down and shot him twice more, and clubbed him. He was then tied in a blanket and thrown into the freezing Neva river.

Rasputin's body was later found under the river, showing signs that he had struggled to get out of his bindings before dying from drowning. 

5. Fidel Castro: 
The Cuban communist leader has proven to be a very hard man to kill. Fabian Escalante, the man in charge of protecting Castro, estimates he has faced around 638 assassination attempts from enemy parties. In Castro's own words, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."

The attempts have been diverse in style, including poison pills, explosive cigars, fungal infected suits, poison syringe within a pen, and plain old shootings.

Despite all attempts, the old statesman has survived to the current ripe age of 89.

Novo Manzoor is an athlete. He surfs the web all day. You can reach him at: novo_manzoor@yahoo.com