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At least four people tried to assassinate Benito Mussolini, but the Honourable Violet Gibson, child of a rich and prominent Anglo-Irish family, was the only one to draw blood. She travelled to Rome with the original intention, it appears, of murdering the Pope, but then changed her plan. On 7 April 1926 she took her revolver and a stone wrapped in a cloth (for use in case she needed to smash the window of his car) and walked to the Campidoglio, Michelangelo’s magnificent piazza. There she shot the Italian prime minister at close range. Her first bullet nicked his nose, drawing copious blood; the second jammed. She was set upon by the furious mob and only saved by the police from being lynched.