Random Most Bizarre Assassination Attempts In History (11 items)

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  (#1) Lewis Powell Fought Everyone He Saw While Trying To Kill Lincoln's Secretary Of State

  John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865 was only one part of a coordinated attack on the political leadership of the American government. As Booth entered the President's box at Ford's theater, Lewis Powell approached the Washington, DC residence of William Seward, the Secretary of State and an outspoken abolitionist. 

  The Secretary of State had suffered a serious injury in a carriage accident on April 5, breaking several bones including his jaw. Powell claimed to Seward's butler that he was delivering medicine prescribed by a doctor. The servant was suspicious and told Powell to wait. The physically imposing Powell ignored him and ascended the stairs to the second floor and the home's bedrooms.

  After knocking out Seward's son, Frederick, and stabbing an Army sergeant, Powell jumped on the Secretary of State's bed and began stabbing Seward in the face. Seward was wearing a metal brace to help mend his jaw, and this device neutralized most of Powell's efforts. One thrust, however, cut Seward's throat eliciting a great deal of blood. Because it was difficult to see in the darkened room, Powell concluded that he must have killed the politician and began fighting with Seward's other son, Augustus, who stormed into the room.

  Powell stabbed Augustus and fled. On the stairway, he was confronted by a State Department messenger who had walked in the open front door. Powell stabbed him as well (it was kind of his thing) and then ran into the street. He eluded capture for three days but was eventually imprisoned, tried, and convicted of conspiracy to murder government officials. He was sentenced to death. Although Seward was seriously injured, he and the other victims of Powell survived the incident.
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  (#2) Margaret Thatcher Was Nearly Blown Up By A Bomb In A VCR

  In 1984, following the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, the IRA became determined to strike at the very heart of the English government by attempting to assassinate Margaret Thatcher herself. Aware that Thatcher would attend the Annual Conservative Party Conference, the IRA began to plan.

  Three weeks before the event, an IRA bomb maker named Jerry Magee checked into the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, under an assumed name and placed a bomb in Room 629. Using electronic parts from a VCR, he set the bomb to explode more than three weeks later, October 11, at 2:53 AM on the morning of the last day of the conference.

  See, the party leader gives a speech on the final day of the event, so the IRA was reasonably assured that Thatcher would be present. The explosive was supposed to be strong enough to collapse the whole building, killing everyone inside. The bomb did blow up on schedule, but it only killed five people and injured thirty others. Thatcher herself narrowly avoided a collapsing chimney column only a few feet away from her room. 

  Magee's fingerprints were still on his check-in card and he was arrested. Given eight life sentences and a minimum of 35 years in jail, he was released as a result of the Good Friday Agreement prisoner exchange in 1999. 
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  (#3) Two Pistols Were Too Scared Of Andrew Jackson To Fire

  On January 30, 1835, an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence became the first person to attempt to assassinate the President of the United States. Andrew Jackson was leaving the US Capitol building after attending a funeral for a House member, when Lawrence confronted him, pulling the trigger on a pistol.

  Although the percussion cap ignited, the gun misfired. Lawrence then took another pistol out of his pocket (reloading was pretty cumbersome) and shot at Jackson again. That gun, astoundingly, also misfired. Some accounts maintain that Jackson attempted to beat Lawrence with his cane, but most likely the President was rushed from the scene quickly.

  The utterly delusional assassin believed himself the King of England. Whether or not Lawrence's mind was damaged by habitual exposure to the chemicals in the paint that he used is not clear, but a jury was quite clear on his sanity. They declared him criminally insane after five minutes and sent him to a mental institution where he died in 1861. When both pistols were tested a hundred years later by the Smithsonian, they both fired on the first attempt. Were the guns somehow aware of Jackson and afraid of his retribution? Probably not, but who can say? Jackson himself chose to believe that it was divine intervention.   
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  (#4) Harry Truman Slept Through Most Of An Attack By Puerto Rican Nationalists

  When it was decided during Harry Truman's administration that the White House would be renovated, Truman moved to a temporary residence at Blair House, then the official home of the Vice President. Accompanied only by a couple of Secret Servicemen and even pausing for red lights, Truman used to walk a half block on a public street to work at his executive office. Things were different in 1950.

  On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalist gunmen attempted to shoot their way into Blair House in an attempt on Truman's life. Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, both native born Puerto Ricans, were coordinating their attack with uprisings occurring on their home island. While Truman was taking a post-lunch nap in a second story bedroom, the gunmen approached the steps of the building and began firing at White House Police officers and Secret Servicemen.

  Collazo got as far as the front steps before being seriously wounded. Torresola wounded several members of law enforcement before the (already mortally wounded) police officer Leslie Coffelt emerged from his guard shack in the front of the building and shot Torresola in the head, killing him instantly. Coffelt would die in the hospital four hours later.

  Hearing the commotion, President Truman actually opened the second floor window directly over the entrance, only to be warned by the Secret Service to get back as Torresola was reloading his weapon. Collazo would be sentenced to death, and Truman would later commute the sentence to life in prison. Jimmy Carter commuted Collazo's sentence in 1979 and he returned to Puerto Rico.  
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  (#5) The Royal Dutch Family Escaped Suicide Car Attack, But Eight People Died

  On April 30, 2009, during a parade honoring a Dutch national holiday, a car driven at high speed narrowly missed the open air bus containing Queen Beatrix and other members of the Dutch royal family. In front of thousands of horrified onlookers, the car then slammed into a monument, striking 17 pedestrians. Eight individuals, including the driver, 38-year-old Karst Tates, would eventually die from their injuries. 

  Tates had apparently recently lost his job and faced eviction, but had no criminal record and no drugs or alcohol in his system. Before losing consciousness, Tates did state to police that he meant to harm the Dutch royal family. No concrete motive for the attack was ever verified. News accounts described Tates as a "loner."
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  (#6) FDR Was Almost Shot To Death By A Man Shorter Than Napoleon

  Franklin D. Roosevelt was the President-Elect when he began giving a speech to a small crowd in a Miami park on February 15, 1933. Roosevelt was speaking from the rear seat of an open car, as his polio made it less awkward than speaking from a platform. The crowd pressed forward, and 32-year-old Giuseppe "Joe" Zangara fired six shots at FDR.

  Here's where it gets weird. The diminutive 5'1" Zangara had to stand on an unstable folding chair to get a reasonable vantage point to shoot FDR. Fun fact: he bought the pistol for eight dollars at a pawn shop. None of the shots hit Roosevelt, but they did hit five other people, including Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.

  Zangara was initially sentenced to eighty years in jail, but when Cermak died from peritonitis three weeks after the shooting, the would-be assassin was retried for murder and given the death penalty. Zangara plead guilty and was sentenced to death. Five weeks after the shooting and after only ten days on Death Row at Raiford, Florida, Zangara was placed in 'Ol Sparky (Florida's electric chair) and executed. His final words: "Viva l'Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere! ... Push the button! Go ahead, push the button!"   
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  (#7) Pope John Paul II Was Shot Twice In The Stomach And No One Knows Why

  On May 13, 1981, a Turkish national named Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II. As John Paul greeted a St. Peters Square crowd in his Popemobile, Agca shot the Pope four times, twice hitting him in the midsection. He was rushed to the hospital and recovered.

  Agca's motivation and political connections have always been murky. Although Agca has claimed that he was paid by Turkish criminals to kill the Pope, he also met extensively with Bulgarian embassy officials in Rome leading up to the assassination attempt.

  One theory is that the the Soviet government, concerned with the effect that John Paul II would have on Iron Curtain countries, wanted the Pope killed. No concrete motive for Agca's attempt was ever verified. At the request of John Paul II, the Italian president pardoned Agca and he was deported to Turkey in June of 2000.

  He would spend much of the next ten years either in prison or in legal jeopardy for crimes committed before he shot the Pope. Agca frequently changed his story concerning who ordered him to kill the Pope, implicating everyone from the Ayatollah Khomeini to the Russian KGB.
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  (#8) President Reagan Was Inches Away From Death

  On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. fired six wild shots at President Ronald Reagan. Five missed. Initially, it was believed that Reagan had escaped injury and media outlets reported that the President was not hit. However, as they sped towards the White House, Reagan complained of pain in his rib cage. 

  The head of the President's secret service detail, Jerry Parr, made the decision to go instead to George Washington University Hospital. President Reagan entered the hospital, insisting on walking to the emergency room. He suddenly crumpled to one knee and began to experience difficulty breathing.

  The first reading of Reagan's blood pressure revealed it was dangerously low. The bullet had stopped only one inch from Reagan's heart and he was bleeding heavily internally. It took 35 minutes to stabilize Reagan. During this surgery, he lost approximately half of his blood supply. He was very, very close to dying.

  Reagan left the hospital a week later; it would be many years before the media and the American people grasped the seriousness of Reagan's condition during this incident.  
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  (#9) The Soviet Government Covered Up An Assassination Attempt On Leonid Brezhnev For 30 Years

  On January 22, 1969, a mentally unstable, disaffected Russian soldier fired numerous shots at a motorcade purportedly transporting Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev to a ceremony honoring several cosmonauts. What made this assassination attempt remarkable was that, despite its occurrence on live Soviet television and in front of a large crowd, it was obscured for 30 years before the Russian government released specific details of the incident.

  At the time, the Soviet government acknowledged to the Western press that an "incident" occurred but other than a terse statement a few days after the attempt, no other details were offered. The assassin, Viktor Ilyin, was personally interviewed by KGB head Yuri Andropov, declared insane and placed in a Stalinist-style mental institution. 

  Despite the fact that he did kill the chauffeur of one the limos and slightly wounded the cosmonauts, Ilyin was eventually released from the mental institution in the '90s and given an apartment and a disability pension.  
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  (#10) No One Was Charged For Shooting Bob Marley

  On December 3, 1976, three gunman broke into Bob Marley's residential compound in Kingston, Jamaica. They shot at Marley's wife as they snuck in through the front gate, wounding her in the scalp before storming into the rehearsal area where Bob Marley and his band were rehearsing. They shot wildly at the occupants. Marley narrowly avoided a shot in the chest when his manager, Don Taylor, pushed him to the ground at the last second. The bullet, however, still pierced Marley's arm.

  Marley had gotten caught up in the violent political environment surrounding Prime Minister Michael Manley and his rival, Edward Seaga. Marley was scheduled to play a free concert (organized by the government) but was warned not to play, lest his participation indicate support for Manley. Other, more sinister, motivations involving American interests and hostility towards Manley (perceived as a radical and potential communist) have also been floated.

  All of the wounded, including Bob Marley, recovered. The performer appeared at the festival as scheduled two days later. However, he subsequently left Jamaica for two years, settling in London. No one was ever prosecuted for the shooting and the bullet remained in Marley's arm for the rest of his life. 
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  (#11) Two Unconnected Women Tried To Kill President Gerald Ford Within Two Weeks Of Each Other

  Twice in September of 1975, President Gerald Ford was confronted with pistol-wielding assassins attempting to shoot him at close range. Atypically, both attackers were female. The first attempt occurred on September 5, when Ford was walking the grounds of the state capital in Sacramento. While shaking hands with the crowd, Ford was confronted by a Charles Manson family member, Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme. Dressed entirely in red, including a bright scarlet dress and elf like stocking cap (perfect attire to remain inconspicuous) Fromme drew her Colt .45 from a leg holster under her dress, pointed it at Ford and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. At the time Fromme exclaimed, "It didn't go off! Can you believe it?!" as she was wrestled to the ground.

  Later that same month on September 22, 1975, President Ford was back in California, addressing a conference at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel. As he was preparing to enter his limo in front of the hotel, Sara Jane Moore, a radicalized FBI informant and 45-year-old bookkeeper, fired two shots at him from across the street.

  One shot was relatively close to the President, and the second was deflected by an onlooker who wrestled Moore to the ground. Moore received a life sentence and worked as an accountant in jail. She was paroled in 2007, after 32 years in prison. Squeaky Fromme was paroled in 2009. 

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