2024-07-15 23:53:48
After former US President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the upcoming presidential election, survived a failed assassination attempt, learn about the most prominent assassination attempts targeting US presidents, 4 of which succeeded.
The American website “Axios” reported that there were 15 “direct attacks” on “presidents, presidents-elects, and candidates between 1835 and 2005,” according to a congressional report published in 2008, noting that attempted attacks occurred after that date.
From Lincoln to Kennedy
Throughout the history of the United States, four presidents have been assassinated while in office, the first and most prominent of whom was Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865 by a racist, anti-black man named John Wilkes Booth, while he was at Ford’s Theater in Washington to attend a play.
Lincoln is famous for ending slavery in the United States, after a bloody civil war that the country witnessed between 1861 and 1865. His assassin died about 12 days after the assassination.
The second American president to be assassinated was James Garfield, who was killed by a man named Charles Guiteau in 1881, shortly after he had been president for no more than 4 months.
Reports said the killer had asked to be the US ambassador to France but was turned down, so he decided to kill Garfield in revenge, before he was later sentenced to death.
In the early twentieth century, US President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz while visiting an art gallery in Buffalo, New York.
In contrast, many US leaders have survived deliberate assassination attempts, including President Andrew Jackson, who was the target of an assassination attempt in 1835.
At that time, a man named Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Jackson with two pistols, but both weapons jammed, allowing the president to defend himself with the help of the crowd.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt during a campaign rally, similar to what happened to Trump.
A tavern owner named John Schrank shot Roosevelt, but he survived because the thick glasses he had in his coat pocket, along with a thick copy of his speech, helped deflect the shot.
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt in Miami before his official inauguration, when he was shot by Giuseppe Zangara, but the bullets hit and killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.
President Harry Truman was also the target of an assassination attempt in 1950 by Puerto Rican nationalists when they attacked his home in Washington, D.C. One of the attackers was killed by guards.
President Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in quick succession in 1975, but he survived.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., after giving a speech there.
The president’s press secretary, James Brady, was more seriously injured than Reagan, and would later become an anti-gun activist.
The last assassination attempt on American presidents, before today’s Trump incident, was on former President Barack Obama, as a man from Idaho was accused of that attempt, when he shot at the White House in 2011.
Last updated: July 14, 2024 – 23:40
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2024-07-15 23:53:48