7 September 17

Can you read my tie? It's "coded" with a not-so-secret three-letter word. On this date in 1978, Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was assassinated on a London street by someone from the Bulgarian secret police, most likely assisted by the Soviet KGB. The now-legendary event unfolded like this:

Following his usual daily routine, Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames, and waited at a bus stop to take a bus to his job at the BBC. He felt a slight sharp pain, as a bug bite or sting, on the back of his right thigh. He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street and got in a taxi which then drove away. The event is recalled as the "Umbrella Murder" with the assassin claimed to be Francesco Gullino, codenamed "Piccadilly." When Markov arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, he noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier, and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC about this incident. That evening he developed a fever and was admitted to St James' Hospital in Balham, where he died four days later, on 11 September 1978, at the age of 49. The cause of death was poisoning from a ricin-filled pinhead-sized platinum pellet (which had been fired from the umbrella).