A Few Famous Assassinations

Assassins throughout history have always done one of two things; they either give the country a good laugh with their idiotic failure, or they leave us distraught and horrified at their success. The stories behind these disturbing acts in history are truly something to look into. I've compiled a list of assassinations and assassination attempts throughout history that may or may not raise your eyebrows and make you wonder: what were these people thinking?

1. Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the first U.S. president to be targeted by an assassin, and boy was it a doozy! In 1835, a disgruntled, unemployed man named Richard Lawrence targeted Jackson as he was leaving the U.S. Capitol building. Lawrence had brought two pistols for good measure, fully loaded, both hidden in his coat pocket. This guy really wanted Jackson dead. He took out his first pistol, aimed it at Jackson, and fired. But whaddya know? By pure chance, it randomly misfired. Since no assassination attempt had ever happened before, Jackson and company were confused long enough for Lawrence to take out his second pistol and try again. He aimed it at Jackson and shot. His second gun misfired. Lawrence stood there in shock, unable to understand why his two fully loaded guns just happened to misfire. Had he tried either of them again, he most certainly would've been successful. However, by that point, Jackson had wised up to the situation and began beating Lawrence with his cane while others restrained and disarmed him. 

So, not only did Andrew Jackson become the first president to survive an assassination attempt, he also became the first to assault his own attacker!

2. Abraham Lincoln 

Everyone knows a little bit about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the beloved leader of the Union during the American Civil War. Only weeks before his assassination, President Lincoln had an eery dream in which he wandered the halls of the White House, hearing mournful sobs. When he followed the sounds, he came upon soldiers guarding a corpse. When he asked who was dead in the White House, a guard told him the president, and that he had been killed by an assassin. It shook Lincoln for weeks, up until the very night of his death. On April 14th, 1865, Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, had tickets to a play called Our American Cousin being held at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln had tried to get numerous people to attend the play with him but was unsuccessful until Major Henry Rathbone and his fiance, Clara Harris, agreed to attend. 

John Wilkes Booth, a handsome actor from the South who was probably the equivalent to George Clooney, happened to stop by Ford theatre that day and hear about Lincoln's attendance to the play that night. Booth, who had been planning to kidnap Lincoln for ransom, made a split decision to assassinate him that night. It's clear this man had a flair for the dramatic, as he decided last minute he'd shoot the president in a blaze of glory rather than a boring ol' kidnapping. Booth waited to shoot Lincoln until the funniest line of the play had been delivered so laughter would muffle the gunshot. Lincoln slumped over as Henry Rathbone tried to prevent Booth from leaving. Rathbone was stabbed but not mortally wounded, and Booth jumped over the box and onto the stage. Even after fracturing his ankle in the process, he screamed "Sic Semper Tyrannus!" which in English means "Thus always to tyrants". What a line for his last act on stage.

America's reaction completely took Booth by surprise. The North was distraught while a majority of the South thought Booth had gone too far. While Booth was on the run in the following days, he read America's reaction and grew deeply depressed, disappointed that no one thought he was a dashing hero. Booth was tracked down by the Union army on April 26th at a farm in Virginia. Booth locked himself in a barn, but it caught on fire. Whether or not the soldiers did this on purpose is unclear to historians. Booth was shot in the process of escaping the fire and died shortly after. Moments before he passed, he looked at his hands and said, "Useless. Useless." Also, a fun (or kind of depressing actually) fact not many know: Major Henry Rathbone's mental health greatly declined after the assassination, and he ended up murdering Clara Harris by shooting and stabbing her several times before attempting suicide. Yikes.

3. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie

Although this didn't happen in the U.S., this assassination majorly rocked the world. It started World War I, after all! The events that unfolded that day are something out of a dramatic movie. It started when Franz and Sophie were visiting Sarajevo, the capitol of Bosnia, Austria-Hungary, on June 28th, 1914. They were riding in a welcome parade when a grenade was thrown at them by a member of the Black Hand, a group of Bosnian assassins who were prowling the streets ready to kill the Duke and his wife. Franz, quick on his feet, ended up deflecting the bomb and it exploded a ways behind them. Angrily he shouted, "Is this how you welcome your guests?" After the incident, he and Sophie insisted on visiting the wounded in the hospital. 

Gavrilo Princip, age 19

Meanwhile, Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year-old member of the Black Hand, wandered the streets depressed. Earlier he had aimed his gun at the royal couple a few times during the parade but chickened out. When a fellow Black Hand member threw a grenade and failed, he got discouraged and walked away from the parade. He stopped in a sandwhich shop shorty after. As he did this, Franz and Sophia left the hospital and instructed their driver to go to the palace where they were to stay. The driver accidentally took a wrong turn down a street that Gavrilo Princip happened to be exiting a sandwhich shop from. After all the failed attempts, the royal couple was right in front of him. As the driver was backing up to turn down the right street, Princip approached the car (which had no roof), took out his gun and fatally shot both Franz and Sophie. Thus began an outrage throughout Europe that eventually led to a World War--all because a driver took a wrong turn. 

4. JFK

On November 22nd, 1963, one of the most beloved presidents of the United States was fatally shot in Dallas, Texas, during a parade in his honor. Video shows John F. Kennedy happily waving to crowds one moment and slumping over on his wife, Jackie, the next. In the moments after the shooting, Jackie Kennedy crawled onto the back of the convertible to gather bits of her husband's brain matter and skull fragments that had been splattered all over the car. "They killed my husband," She said. "I have his brains in my hand." 

Oswald shot on live TV.

He was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, who hid in a six-story building and shot Kennedy when his car rounded a corner in the plaza. Oswald simply left and snuck into a movie theatre, where authorities arrested him 70 minutes after the assassination. Oswald never got a trial. He was shot and killed by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby two days later on live TV. The JFK assassination is a huge controversy because of the possible conspiracy associated with it. I'm not going to get into that, because that's a whole other blog. But I will, eventually!

5. Last but not least....Gerald R. Ford

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme

Sarah Jane Moore

Ford is the only known president to have two assassination attempts done by females, and both of them failed. In 1975, a follower of Charles Manson named Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, attempted to shoot Gerald R. Ford. However, an alert secret service agent spotted her and jammed his finger underneath the hammer at the last minute to stop the gun from firing. A little over two weeks later, a woman named Sarah Jane Moore aimed a gun at Ford and attempted to shoot. However, a Marine standing nearby saw and averted the gun, which shot at a wall inches from Ford's head and then hit a taxi driver. Both women were recently paroled after serving time, but you have to wonder...what was it about Ford that made women want to shoot him so badly? 

These were only a few of the many assassinations and attempts that took place in history, but to me, they are the most interesting. Funny or not, they are a part of history forever.

Hitler's History

For my first post about a historical topic, I decided to bring out the big guns and share a few things about Adolf Hitler. In school, when we learn about Hitler, we are told of his life mainly during World War II. We know a great deal about his murderous ideals and merciless brutality towards Jews, gypsies, prisoners of war, handicaps, homosexuals, and many more Europeans. Hitler was, and to this day remains, one of the most evil tyrants in history. But people don't really know about Adolf Hitler's life prior to his rise to power. Who was the man that turned an angry group of revolutionaries into the deadliest gang in the world? What are a few things that happened in Hitler's early life that turned him into the maniac he was?

Hitler as an infant 1890

Adolf Hitler was born to Alois and Klara Hitler on April 20th, 1889 in Austria-Hungary. Of six children, Adolf and Paula Hitler were the only ones to survive into adulthood. Alois wanted his son to be very much like him. He was strict, authoritative, and strongly disciplined Hitler, who was lazy, moody, and far more attached to his mother. To say Hitler had daddy issues would be an understatement. Whenever his father scolded him, he grew closer to his mother. Hitler always described deep resentment for his father. You many recall various stories of Hitler wanting to attend art school. This desire spanned all the way back to his high school years, when he wanted to go to a classical school to become an artist. But Hitler's father had a different plans and sent him to a type of public high school in Linz, Austria. Hitler wrote in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that he rebelled against this decision and did poorly in school on purpose in hopes his father would realize that he belonged in art school. However, his father didn't give two craps about art school.

Hitler's father proudly worked for the Austrian government, which could be a main reason Hitler developed a strong sense of German nationalism at an early age. It's strange to think that if Hitler hadn't been trying to find any way to stick it to his father, maybe he wouldn't have become such a die-hard Germany-lover. He only did because he knew it would piss off his dad. Shortly after his father died, Hitler moved to Vienna and was rejected from art school twice. During this time his mother died of cancer. It was blow after blow for Hitler in those years. To make a living, he sold watercolors, often times to Jewish customers. He even lived in a homeless workers shelter and had Jewish friends. But Vienna is where Hitler claims he developed his full anti-Semitism. Vienna was a never-ending waterfall of prejudice and racism in the early 1900's. It was like moving to the south during the Civil War and falling in love with the racism of southern whites. Hitler was all too excited to blame someone for Germany losing the war, and Jews had a big target on their backs.

Now, here's one of the more messed up parts of Hitler's early years. He had a very close relationship with his half-niece, Geli Raubal. It was even considered to be sexual. He was jealous and kept a tight leash on her, often forcing her to end any relationship she tried to have with another man. I know this is gross, but Hitler's sexuality has often been studied because it's a rather shocking piece of his life we don't know about. He was considered to be a bit of a pervert, and for good reason--many historians believe Hitler had a fetish for being urinated or defecated on before or after sexual intercourse. This was such an eyebrow-raiser that even my history professor got red in the face when he told us. His niece was believed to take part in this activity, as was his wife of two days, Eva Braun. Coincidentally, both women committed suicide.

After he heard Benito Mussolini had been captured and assassinated, Hitler took the coward's way out at the end of the war and shot himself after Eva bit on a tablet of cyanide. Their bodies were doused in gasoline and burned along with Hitler's dogs. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's close confidant, along with his wife and six children, was also shot and burned.

So Hitler was basically a pompous, fantasizing, perverted, lazy man with daddy issues in his early life. We know a little bit more about his later life during World War II, where his arrogant sadism turned into desperation as his chances of victory in the war diminished. But lets not forget that Hitler wasn't the only crazy person running the show. In the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, a young Elie witnesses a horrific scene in which SS officers toss living infants into the air over a grave and use them as machine gun targets.

"Beautiful Beast" Irma Grese

SS officer Irma Grese was nicknamed the "Beautiful Beast" for her good looks and deadly behavior. She would often whip men in the testicles, shoot prisoners at random, unleash dogs on prisoners, and torture weak and sick women. Nazi doctors conducted experiments testing high altitude on Jewish men in order to see how high a Luftwaffe (German Air Force) plane could climb. These experiments nearly always resulted in death.

As you can see, Hitler was one psychotic nutjob that inspired an army of psychotic nutjobs. But without knowing certain bits and pieces of his life, it's hard to understand how anyone can become that big of a monster. Germany was a nation so vulnerable after World War I that anyone who had the right amount of motivation could take it over. Unfortunately, a horrible person with even worse ideals took over and brainwashed much of the country. Hell, much of Europe. Some European people had their heads so far up their asses that many who lived next to concentration camps didn't even know what they were until Allied troops made them tour the carnage after the camp's liberation. I'm not saying any one country is perfect. Certainly every country throughout history has been responsible for inhumane atrocities, but it's up to us to learn from those mistakes and never let it happen again.

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." 
-Adolf Hilter

Starting Out!

Hello friends and welcome to my first blog! I was inspired to do this by my awesome friend Ryan, who started her own blog a few weeks ago. I was always under the impression that blogs are people's online version of a diary or journal, and I never started one because I've had about 30 diaries in my life that never made it past two pages. It wasn't because I don't like talking about myself, because everyone does to some degree (don't lie to yourself). I just have found something I'd rather talk about way more...history!

Yep, I'm going write about history. Before you run for the hills, I'm not going to drone on about dates or boring facts in my blogs. I'm going to start each blog with a new history topic and I'm going to blow your minds with all the amazing things the topic has to offer. I get it--history can be stupid boring. I've heard it from many, many "math and science" people. I'm simply going to make it not-boring.

There's a million things your history teachers never told you that I will. You also may find yourself thinking, "Yeah, cool story, but so what?" Well, in addition to spreading the historic love, I'm going to give my perspective on how relevant that history is today.

All the information I throw at you is from books, textbooks, and a string of great professors and teachers I've had. If you find that I'm wrong about something, please correct me.

Since it's my first blog (and 3 in the morning...?), I won't be writing about anything until later. When I do, I hope you will enjoy reading my blog just as much as I enjoy writing it.

Marina