For many years, the Wars of Religion bloodied the kingdom of France. Violent and hateful, they turned the country into a battlefield in the name of God. Two kings of France were assassinated by fanatics who believed they had a mission. Today we turn to King Henry III, who reigned in an extremely troubled time.

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On the morning of July 15th 1997, on the porch of his sumptuous 5,800-square-metre villa in Miami Beach, Florida, a man was returning home. He had just bought some newspapers. The man was Gianni Versace, founder of the luxury brand that bore his name. Two shots rang out. The first bullet fractured the bottom of his skull and the base of his brain. The second bullet lodged in the right side of his face, near his nose, before fracturing the top of his skull. Versace collapsed...

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On March the 1st 2005, Edouard Stern did not show up for work. He could not be reached by telephone. His colleagues were worried because this was not his boss's style. You don't become the thirty-eighth richest person in France by lazing around in bed on morning. They went to his Geneva home and it was Dolores, the cleaning lady, who allowed them to enter the luxurious flat whose alarm had not been set. Something must have happened to Mr Edouard...

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On Sunday December 2nd 1945, on the Boulevard des Invalides in Paris, a man was changing the flat tyre of his car. His companion had just gone to get a taxi. He was alone and it was raining. His body was found a few metres from his vehicle, dead, with a large-calibre bullet in his back. In his pocket, twelve thousand francs and his papers : Robert Denoël, forty-three years old, one of the greatest French publishers, had just been murdered.

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On 22nd November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated while on an election tour in Dallas. His presumed assassin was quickly arrested. He was Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the book depository from which the fatal shots were fired. He denied any involvement in the crime...

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November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was in Dallas, Texas. Although very popular, he chose to start his re-election tour in the bastion of the American right that hated him. Several advisers suggested that he cancelled his visit. Hate songs were sung in town and posters have been put up accusing him of treason. But the president persisted in his choice...

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On 31st July 1914, Jean Jaurès, founder and director of the newspaper L'Humanité,took his journalists to a café for dinner. He pushed open the door of a restaurant on the corner of rue du Croissant and rue Montmartre. The Café du Croissant was crowded but the owner found them a table near the window overlooking the street: Jaurès was a regular and the furniture could be pushed aside for him...

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The James family was on the Southern side when the American Civil War began in 1861. Jesse was too young to be a soldier, so at sixteen he joined the gang of a notorious outlaw named Quantrill. He took part in the massacre of the village of Lawrence and boasted of having killed thirty-six men in a single day...

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