A former spy has claimed an attempt to kill Prince Philip during an official visit to Sydney, Australia, was foiled at the last minute after two bombs were discovered before they could go off.
The claims, made by former military intelligence officer-turned-journalist Warner Russell – suggest the Duke of Edinburgh's motorcade was targeted by the IRA in March 1973 in revenge for the Bloody Sunday massacre two months before.
But the 92-year-old wouldn't be the first to survive an attempt on his life....
Vladimir Putin
In 2008 an attempt to execute Russian president Vladimir Putin was foiled when a man with sniper and Kalashnikov assault rifles was arrested.
The man, later identified as Tajik Shakhvelad Osmanov, 24, was captured in a rented flat overlooking Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral on the same day as the presidential election.
The flat offered a clear line towards the cathedral stage where Putin could be shot from.
Four years later – and ahead of another presidential election – another assassination attempt on Putin's life was said to have been stopped.
Several men, said to belong to an Islamist group from the North Caucus, were apprehended following an explosion at their flat but the so-called attempt was dismissed as a publicity stunt by Putin's opponents.
Barack Obama
In 2012 two white supremacists were convicted of attempting to kill then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and murder numerous African-Americans in the process.
Paul Schlesselman, 19 had planned to go on a cross-country killing spree – with some robberies along the way – that would see 88 black Americans killed and 14 beheaded, and would culminate in the assassination of Obama.
The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist movement – 88 stands for Heil Hitler while 14 refers to a code racists abide by.
Schlesselman was sentenced to 10 years in prison while his accomplice Daniel Cowart was jailed for 14 years.
John F Kennedy
In December 1960 a plot to assassinate John F Kennedy was foiled three years before Lee Harvey Oswald's attempt proved successful.
New Hampshire resident Richard Pavlick was anti-establishment with a particular hatred for Roman Catholics which made JFK a prime target.
Pavlick managed to get his hands on enough dynamite “to level a small mountain”, according to the Secret Service, and was sat in his loaded car waiting for the president-elect to get in his, so he could ram it and blow themselves both up.
But he held off after spotting JFK's wife Jackie and their small children as he didn't want to kill them and drove around with his Buick filled with explosives waiting for his next opportunity. But a routine traffic stop revealed his dangerous cargo and found unfit for trial, Pavlick was sent to a mental institution. He was eventually released and died in 1975.
“President Kennedy may have been saved from assassination last December only because Mrs. Kennedy unexpectedly appeared with their two children to bid him goodbye on his way to Mass," said the New York Times in August 1961.
Adolf Hitler
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In July 1944 Adolf Hitler survived an assassination attempt after a bomb exploded at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.
The Nazi leader suffered minor burns and concussion but managed to keep to a meeting with Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
The third attempt on Hitler's life, this attempt was a failed coup – that became known as a the July plot – and was led by senior military leaders.
Three people died in the attempt on Hitler's life and several of the conspirators were executed or offered the chance to commit suicide.
Eight were hanged with piano wire from meat hooks and their execution filmed and shown to Nazi leaders and senior members of the military.
Fidel Castro
The American secret service's feelings towards former Cuban president Fidel Castro is no secret – with some claiming they made more than 600 attempts on his life.
But the declassification of secret documents has revealed the CIA really has tried to kill him on numerous occasions.
They include the attempt in 1960, when the CIA tasked a former FBI agent with recruiting a mobster to pretend he wanted Castro killed for financial reasons – claiming Cuba's banning of gambling was impacting the Mafia's finances.
The secret service had poisonous pills to put in Castro's food – but they failed to find anyone to actually carry out the act.
Ronald Reagan
In March 1981 a plan was hatched to kill Ronald Reagan. The motive wasn't political but an attempt to get the attentions of a woman.
After watching 1976 film Taxi Driver, John Hinkley Jr became obsessed with Jodie Foster, who plays a child prostitute in the film, even moving to Connecticut when he found out she was studying at Yale.
But when his attempts to get her attention – including enrolling in a writing class at the university where he'd leave her poems and notes – failed, he decided to assassinate Reagan as Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle does in the film.
Hinkley shot at Reagan six times outside a hotel in Washington DC. He missed but a bullet ricocheted off the presidential limousine and hit the president, causing serious internal bleeding and a punctured lung.
Hinkley was tried for attempted murder but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was held in a mental institution instead.