The United States of America has a long history of assassinations and plots to kill the president or those who want to enter the White House.
There is a bloody history of US presidential assassination attempts: four US presidents have been killed, others targeted, and a number of candidates as well.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, who escaped with a bullet wound to his ear while he was speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, joins a long list of moments of extreme political violence.
Andrew Jackson was the first American president to experience an assassination attempt on 30 January 1835.
The seventh president of the United States was leaving the Capitol building in Washington DC when he was confronted by a man aiming a pistol at him – which misfired.
According to reports, Jackson confronted the gunman – unemployed house painter Richard Lawrence – hitting him several times with his walking stick.
Lawrence pulled out a second pistol and misfired again. He was detained by Jackson’s aides.
Abraham Lincoln
One of the key moments in American political history is the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on 14 April 1865.
He was the first American president to be assassinated after being shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth.
The American Civil War was over and President Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and a Republican, had the task of reuniting and rebuilding a divided nation without slavery.
One evening, he was watching the popular comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, when Booth snuck into the presidential box and shot him in the back of the head.
Booth leapt from the box and yelled “sic semper tyrannist!” – the Virginia state motto meaning “thus always to tyrants” – at the audience.
Lincoln was taken to a house across the street from the theatre for medical treatment. He died the next morning at the age of 56.
His support for black rights has been cited as a motive behind the killing. Two years before the shooting, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation granting freedom to slaves within the Confederacy.
Booth was shot and killed on 26 April 1865, after he was found hiding in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia.
James Garfield
James Garfield was the second president to be assassinated – by a disgruntled Republican constituent – six months after taking office, while walking through Baltimore and Potomac train station in Washington on 2 July 1881.
The former Union general and Ohio congressman, who became the 20th US president, was on his way to catch a train to New England when he was shot by Charles Guiteau.
Guiteau fired two shots at the president – one grazed his right arm, the other struck him in the lower back.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet lodged in President Garfield using a device he designed specifically for the president.
The mortally wounded president lay at the White House for several weeks and died in September after he was taken to the New Jersey shore.
Guiteau was found guilty and executed in June 1882.
William McKinley
William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was shot six months after the inauguration of his second term.
He had just given a speech in Buffalo, New York, on 6 September 1901 and was shaking hands with people passing through a receiving line outside the Temple of Music when a man fired two shots into his chest at point-blank range.
“There was an instant of almost complete silence, like the hush that follows a clap of thunder,” the New York Times later wrote.
“The president stood stock still, a look of hesitancy, almost of bewilderment, on his face. Then he retreated a step while a pallor began to steal over his features. The multitude seemed only partially aware that something serious had happened.”
Doctors had expected President McKinley to recover – but gangrene then set in around his bullet wounds and brought on a severe case of blood poisoning. He died eight days later on 14 September 1901, with his wife Ida by his side.
Leon F Czolgosz, an unemployed Detroit resident and self-proclaimed anarchist, admitted to the shooting.
The 28-year-old was found guilty at trial and put to death in the electric chair on 29 October 1901.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was in Milwaukee while campaigning to return to the White House having previously served two terms as president.
Running again as a third-party candidate, he was getting into his car outside the Gilpatrick Hotel on 14 October 1912 when he was shot.
Folded papers and a metal glasses case in his pocket apparently blunted the bullet’s impact and Roosevelt, frequently referred to as Teddy, or TR, was not seriously hurt.
According to reports he ordered his aides get him to the Milwaukee Auditorium where he was due to give a speech, and told his audience, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible”, before delivering the bombshell: “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
He continued: “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet – there is where the bullet went through – and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
Only after the speech did he agree to be taken to hospital and recovered from the attack.
John Schrank was arrested over the shooting and spent the remainder of his life in mental hospitals.
Franklin D Roosevelt
Franklin D Roosevelt was the president-elect and had just given a speech in Miami, Florida, from the back of an open car when gunshots rang out.
The 32nd president of the United States was not injured in the 15 February 1933 shooting.
All five gunshots missed him – but did hit bystanders. Four received minor injuries, but one fatally wounded Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.
Guiseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant and unemployed bricklayer was convicted in the shooting and sentenced to death.
Shooting from about 25 feet away, reports suggested he missed because he was only 5ft 1in tall and had to climb up on a wobbly chair to see over the crowd. A woman stood near him also claimed to have hit his hand during the shooting.
Harry S Truman
The 33rd president of the United States was staying at Blair House, across the street from the White House which was being renovated, when two gunmen broke in on 1 November 1950.
President Truman and his wife were upstairs when they heard gunshots – fired by would-be assassins Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo.
They escaped unscathed, but a White House policeman and one of the assailants – Torresola – were killed in an exchange of gunfire. Two other White House policemen were wounded.
Torresola and Collazo were political activists and members of the extremist Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, a group fighting for full independence from the US.
