On June 28, 1914, Bosnian Nationalist Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb at Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in a failed assassination attempt. His plan, devised beforehand, had been to, having thrown the bomb, commit suicide and dramatically fall into a nearby river. How did the final aspect of the plan actually turn out?

Answer: The cyanide poison he took to kill himself was of poor quality. It did not kill him or even knock him out; it merely made him vomit. The river he promptly jumped into was too low in the summer heat to drown him or carry him away, and he fell onto the exposed sand. He was then, embarrassingly, captured by a shopkeeper and barber who had pursued him. The Archduke and his wife Sophie were shot and killed later that day by Gavrilo Princip of the Black Hand group.

Source: The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark; General Historical Texts