First Assassination Attempt
January 30, 1835 - The First Assassination Attempt on an American President.
The first assassination attempt on an American president unfolded on this day in 1835, when Richard Lawrence attempted to murder President Andrew Jackson as the president was leaving a funeral at the Capitol Building.
Lawrence had two flintlock pistols, aiming the first one while he stood within 13 feet of Jackson, but it misfired. An angry Jackson retaliated by beating his would-be assassin repeatedly with his walking stick. Lawrence then pulled his second pistol at point-blank range, again that gun misfired. After the harrowing incident Lawrence was apprehended and committed to a mental institution for the rest of his life.
It was a narrow escape for President Jackson, the odds of two guns misfiring consecutively were 1 in 125,000. Five other sitting presidents would not be so lucky, four of them dying from their gunshot wounds:
Abraham Lincoln - April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer. Lincoln died the next morning.
James A. Garfield - July 2, 1881, less than four months after taking office, while waiting in the Baltimore and Potomac Railway station in Washington, D.C., accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, president James Abram Garfield was shot twice in the back by Charles J. Guiteau.
William McKinley - September 6, 1901. While attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was shot twice in the chest by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Coincidentally the newly developed X-ray machine was on display at the fair, but it was thought of as merely novelty, no one thought to use it to search for the bullet, it might have saved his life and McKinley died of his wounds two weeks later.
John F. Kennedy - November 22, 1963. While traveling in a convertable with the top down in Dallas, Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded by rifle fire. He died 35 minutes later at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested later the same day and charged with shooting Kennedy. Oswald himself was shot and fatally wounded two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
Other Unsuccessful Attempts:
Harry S. Truman - November 1, 1950. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola ambushed the Blair House where Truman was residing temporarily while the White House was undergoing renovations. Torresola was killed by guards and Collazo was wounded and captured. Collazo was found guilty of murder, assault, and attempted assassination of the president. He was sentenced to death. Truman commuted the sentence to life in prison. Curiously, Jimmy Carter would free Collazo in 1979.
Richard M. Nixon - First assassination attempt - April 1972. Arthur Bremer planned to assassinate Nixon during an appearance at Parliament Hill in Ottawa Canada. It was difficult for Bremer to get within firing range of Nixon. He finally to got close to Nixon's limousine as it was leaving Paliament and the car's windows closed just as it passed Bremer. Unsure bullets would go through the glass Bremer didn't open fire. However, the next month Bremer shot U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate George Wallace leaving him paralyzed for life. A second assassination attempt was made on February 22, 1974 by Samuel Byck attempting to crash a commercial airliner into the White House. Once on the plane, he was informed that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. Byck shot the pilot and copilot before killing himself.
Gerald R. Ford - Two attempts, within three weeks, were made on President Ford in September of 1975. The first was on September 5th in Sacramento, California. Squeaky Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt .45 caliber pistol on Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. There were four cartridges in the pistol's magazine but the firing chamber was empty. She was soon restrained by a Secret Service agent. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, where she remains. The second attempt was September 22nd in San Francisco, California, when Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from about 40 feet away. The shot missed Ford because a bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm. Moore was sentenced to life in prison. Sara Jane Moore was paroled on December 31, 2007, a little more than a year after Ford died of natural causes on December 26, 2006, after she had served more than 30 years of her life sentence.
Ronald Reagan - March 30, 1981. John Hinckley fired five shots at Reagan in Washington, D.C. One bullet ruptured Reagan's lung and lodged close to his heart. Hinckley, supposedly trying to impress actress Jodie Foster by mimicking a scene from the movie Taxi Driver, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He remains in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D.C. Reagan was the first sitting president to survive an assassin's bullet, and the fifth sitting president overall to be shot. He was also the first president elected in a year ending in zero -1980- to survive the Curse of Tippecanoe and not die in office since 1820 re-elected president James Monroe.
Bill Clinton - Two attempts were made on Clinton in the Fall of 1994. The first assassination attempt on September 13th was by Frank Eugene Corder who crash landed a small Cessna airplane onto the South Lawn. The plane crashed through the branches of a magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson before coming to rest in a crumpled heap two stories below the Clintons' bedroom. At the time, the presidential family was sleeping at Blair House while repairs were being made to the White House's ventilation system. A second assassination attempt occured on October 29th when Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue. Duran thought that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing on the South Lawn. Clinton was actually in the White House Residence watching a football game on TV. No one was hurt and Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
George W. Bush - May 10, 2005. While President Bush was giving a speech at Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia Vladimir Arutinian threw a live Soviet-made hand grenade towards the podium where Bush was standing and where Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and their two wives were seated. The hand grenade landed about 20 yards away from the podium in the crowd hitting a girl but did not detonate. Arutinian was arrested in July 2005 and convicted in January 2006. He is currently serving a life sentence.
Previously an attempt had been on his father and former U.S. president - G.H.W.Bush - in Kuwait. On April 13, 1993 just three months after the former president had left office. Sixteen men in the employment of Saddam Hussein smuggled a car bomb into Kuwait with the intent of killing Bush while he spoke at Kuwait University. The plot was foiled when Kuwaiti officials found the bomb and arrested the suspected assassins. On June 26, 1993, the Clinton administration launched a missile attack on the Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for the attempted attack against G.H.W.Bush.
Quote for ToDay:
"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity." - Helen Schucman
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