Random Most Bizarre Assassination Attempts In History (11 items)

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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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  (#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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  (#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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  (#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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  (#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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  (#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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