Valerie Solanis doesn’t go down in history as one of those infamous people who changed history by assassinating someone famous. Instead she’s barely remembered by most as the woman who tried, and failed, to murder the Pop Artist Andy Warhol.

In 1969, on June 3rd, just days before Robert Kennedy was assassinated, Valerie Solanis shot Andy Warhol in his office in Manhattan, New York.

Solanis was familiar with Warhol had she’d actually appeared in one of the pop artist’s films. A victim of a tragic past where she was abused as a child, and the author of the book ‘SCUM Manifesto’ which was a tirade against the male species, Solanis believed that Andy Warhol possessed too much control over her own life.

She came to this decision after Andy Warhol had lost a play that she had written and sent to him.

Tragically Warhol didn’t survive long after the incident as it had affected him profoundly. He died in 1987 after telling many of his friends that he’d felt dead for a long time. Solanis served just three years in prison for the attempted murder, and died herself just 14 months after Andy Warhol in a hotel in San Francisco.