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.
No comments:
Post a Comment