Андрей Тихомиров - Assassinations, assassinations and «sudden» deaths of American presidents

There have been many attempts on presidents and former presidents, here are just some of the most famous. The first attempt on the life of a head of state in the history of the United States occurred in 1835. The White House at that time was occupied by US President Andrew Jackson. An unemployed painter shot at the president, but the gun misfired. According to the shooter caught in the act, he lost his job because of the president. Jackson himself, however, was sure that the crime had political customers.

Theodore Roosevelt left the White House in 1909, but in the next election, in 1912, he decided to try his luck again and even created a new Progressive Party for his re-election. On October 14, 1912, he arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Where a certain John Shrank was lying in wait for him. Despite the injury, the president found the strength to speak to the voters and only then turned to doctors. He recovered from his wounds, but lost the election to his Republican rival Taft. John Schrank, who shot at the president, was declared insane and, according to a court verdict, was placed in a psychiatric clinic, where he died 30 years later.

The next president to experience an assassination attempt was Harry Truman. He took up his post after Roosevelt's death, and in 1948 he was re-elected for the next term. In 1951, when Truman was resting in his office after lunch, when two Puerto Ricans – Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola – tried to break into the house, as it turned out later, with the aim of assassinating the president. A three-minute shootout took place between the guards and the attackers. As a result, Torresola and one of the guards were killed, and Collazo was arrested. Collazo was found guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the US president and sentenced to death. Truman personally replaced his electric chair with a life sentence.

And Gerald Ford, who took over the post of President of the United States after Richard Nixon left his post in 1974, became the only US president whose life was attempted twice. And both times unsuccessfully. And both times women. On the morning of September 5, 1975, the president left the Senator Hotel in Sacramento, California and headed to the building where a business meeting was scheduled: smiling, shaking hands. Suddenly, a young woman rushed to the president, aiming a pistol at him. But the shot didn't happen. When the security agents seized the terrorist, she frantically repeated: "The gun didn't fire, it didn't fire!". Later, when examining the weapon, the police stated that the gun had indeed misfired. The detainee was 24-year-old Lynette Fromm, a member of the Charles Manson terrorist gang. But Ford, two hours after the incident, gave a speech about fighting crime and gun control in the California state legislature. However, on September 21, 1975, in Los Angeles, President Ford was shot again. The president left the hotel. The crowd of greeters began to move, and suddenly a shot rang out. Ford hesitantly stopped, but the Secret Service agents quickly and vigorously pushed him into the car, which immediately sped off. 45-year-old Sarah Jane Moore, a well-known activist of the left movement, was arrested.

On March 30, 1981, an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan took place at the entrance to the Washington Hilton Hotel. The assailant is 25-year-old disc jockey John Hinckley. The President, having finished his speech to the delegates of the congress of the builders' union, went to his limousine: there were no more than 20 steps from the entrance to the hotel to the car. Reagan was seriously wounded, the bullet passed a few centimeters from the heart. John Hinckley was declared mentally ill.

There was also such an attempt – on President George W. Bush, at the final press conference in 2008 in Baghdad (American-occupied Iraq), a correspondent of the Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV channel, 29-year-old Iraqi journalist Muntadar al–Zaidi performed the feat of throwing two shoes at American President Bush, shouting at the same time: "This is a gift from the widows and orphans of those who died in Iraq!", employees of the Iraqi special services in the service of the Americans immediately arrested the attacker.