You've all heard a million stories about the JFK assassination... or about RFK and MLK. Maybe even the two women who tried to shoot Gerald Ford. But let's not forget the crazy people who shot Reagan and Roosevelt, who killed Gandhi and McKinley... and so many others...

Gallery by Mack Maloney.

It was because of the McKinley assassination that the U.S. Secret Service began protecting presidents. William McKinley, our 25th president, was shaking hands at a fair in Buffalo, NY on September 5, 1901, when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him twice in the stomach. At first, McKinley's wounds were thought to be minor; his VP, Teddy Roosevelt, went on vacation the next day. In reality, the president's stomach was rife with gangrene and the lingering infection killed him nine days later. (Czolgosz was later executed.) Though he was the only one implicated in the assassination, some historians believe that Czolgosz was part of a larger conspiracy of anarchists.

Gandhi became world famous for earning India's independence through non-violent means; unfortunately, he died in a very violent way. Unpopular with Indian Hindu extremists (he'd already survived five previous assassination attempts), he was shot three times on January 30, 1948 outside a prayer meeting. Two million people took part in his funeral procession. Arrested and tried by an Indian court, shooter Nathuram Godse and a co-conspirator were eventually executed for the murder.

The long time governor of Alabama was running for president for in 1972 and, despite being a segregationist, was rising swiftly in the polls. That all changed on May 15 in Laurel, Maryland: would-be assassin Arthur Bremer pumped five bullets into Wallace; one bullet struck Wallace's spine and paralyzed him for life. Bremer later revealed he shot Wallace purely to achieve fame, a quote that inspired the 1976 movie Taxi Driver,which itself ironically inspired John Hinckley Jr. to shoot President Ronald Reagan nine years later.

On March 30, 1981, Hinckley shot President Reagan and three others outside a Washington hotel. Reagan suffered a punctured lung and extensive internal bleeding but speedy medical attention allowed him to quickly recover and leave the hospital just twelve days later. Eventually found to be insane, Hinckleym, who claimed to have done it to get Taxi Driver star Jodie Foster's attention, was committed to a psychiatric facility.

Bhutto was a strong-willed woman who ran for prime minister of Pakistan by promising to reform its corrupt, militant government. On December 27, 2007, Bhutto was leaving a campaign rally when she stood up in the back of her vehicle to wave to supporters. Just then, a gunman in the crowd fired at her; then two powerful bombs went off nearby. The blasts killed Bhutto and 139 others. Investigators later determined that while the gunman was associated with al Qaeda, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's autocratic president, knew about the plot in advance and failed to tell police about it. He now lives in exile in England.

Seven weeks after Reagan's near-assassination, Pope John Paul II was riding past a huge crowd in St. Peter's Square when trained assassin Mehmet Ali Agca fired three shots at him. One of the bullets struck the Pope in the abdomen, seriously wounding him. Rushed to a nearby hospital, the pontiff endured five hours of emergency surgery before doctors declared him out of danger. While conspiracy theorists thought he could be a KGB hitman, Agca later declared that the orders to shoot the pontiff had come from the Vatican itself. (He was found guilty, imprisoned and later released to serve time for another murder in Turkey.)

On July 2, 1881, Garfield, the 20th President, was shot twice in the D.C. train station by Charles Guiteau. One bullet grazed Garfield's arm, but the other became lodged behind his pancreas. The doctors could not locate the second bullet, so Garfield lay bedridden and in great pain for more than two months. When he expired on September 19 at age 49, Garfield was then the youngest U.S. president to die in office. Though his assassin was believed to have syphilis, a disease that causes mental problems, he was found guilty of murder and executed.

On October 14, 1912, ex-President Roosevelt was about to give a speech in Milwaukee when John Schrank shot him in the chest. The wound would have likely been fatal had Roosevelt not earlier folded his 50-page speech and put it with his glass case in his coat's breast pocket. Seriously injured, Teddy shocked onlookers by insisting on giving his speech before receiving medical attention. After claiming that President McKinley's ghost had told him to shoot Roosevelt, Schrank was judged to be insane and institutionalized for life.

On October 12, 1960, Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was scheduled to address a political rally being televised live. Asanuma was considered an oddball because he supported Communist China, wore Chairman Mao suits, and was extremely anti-American. Shortly after he began his speech, a 17-year-old right wing extremist named Otoya Yamaguchi leapt onto the stage and plunged a sword into Asanuma's stomach and chest, killing him in front of a horrified television audience. Yamaguchi later hanged himself after writing a suicide message in toothpaste on his cell wall. His last words: "Long live the Emperor!"

In April 1993, 14 men were apprehended after smuggling bombs into Kuwait with the intention of assassinating former President George H. W. Bush, who was in the country to give a speech. When the FBI concluded that Saddam Hussein was behind the plot and that the assassins were agents of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, President Clinton ordered two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at Saddam's Intelligence Headquarters, flattening it.

On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and a group of dignitaries were reviewing an annual military parade in Cairo. Towards the end of the ceremony, one of the parade's troop trucks suddenly stopped and its soldiers began firing at the review stand with automatic weapons. Sadat was hit with 37 bullets and soon perished. Eleven others were killed. While all the assassins had links to radical Egyptian Muslim groups, Sadat's nephew, Talaat al-Sadat, later claimed the assassination was an international conspiracy involving the United States and Israel.

July 11, 1804. A New Jersey cliff. Two famous Americans face off in a duel. Alexander Hamilton, founding father vs. Vice President Aaron Burr. Burr has accused Hamilton of insulting him in a newspaper article. Hamilton fires first, intentionally missing Burr, the honorable thing to do, but Burr doesn't return the favor. His shot hits Hamilton in the abdomen, shattering his ribs and spine. Hamilton dies the next day. Though the charge is murder, the case never goes to trial and Burr later returned to Washington, D.C. and resumed his duties as vice president.

Was W. the target of an assassination attempt on 9/11? Bush was staying at a resort on Longboat Key in Florida. While Bush was preparing for his morning jog, witnesses said a van carrying a number of "Middle Eastern-looking men" arrived at the resort claiming they had a "poolside interview" with the president. No such interview was scheduled and the men were sent away. Though the Secret Service denies this story, the newspaper that first reported the incident, the Longboat Observer, has stood by its reporting.

The first attempted assassination of a U.S. president came in 1835, when unemployed painter Richard Lawrence fired two pistols at Andrew Jackson outside the White House. Both pistols misfired, possibly due to humid weather. Jackson severely beat Lawrence with his cane before others, including Davy Crockett, were able to restrain both men. Lawrence was declared unbalanced and committed to an insane asylum.

In 1996, President Clinton attended an economic conference in Manila. While Clinton was en route to visit a Filipino politician, the Secret Service intercepted a suspicious radio message that had used the word "wedding," a sometime-terrorist code word for assassinations, the Secret Service switched Clinton's motorcade to an alternate route. Good thing, because U.S. intelligence officers later found a bomb under a bridge Clinton's limo was supposed to drive over. An investigation determined the assassination attempt had been the work of none other than Osama bin Laden.