Today, 40 years have passed since the assassination attempt in London over the Bulgarian writer and journalist Georgi Markov. He was shot on the London Waterloo Bridge with a poisonous pellet fired from the umbrella of an unknown man. Markov died in a hospital on September 11 from blood poisoning, most likely from ricin. His assassination turned into one of the most iconic crimes during the Cold War and became known as the "Bulgarian umbrella".

Georgi Markov left Bulgaria in 1969. He was a journalist in the Bulgarian section of the BBC. Radio Free Europe broadcast his critical reports, revealing the essence of the totalitarian system in Bulgaria, collected later in the collection entitled “In Absensia: Reports about Bulgaria”.