The New Murrey and Blue blog

There have been no fewer than seventeen attempts on the lives of US Presidents, only four of which succeeded. The very first one of them all was a failure, and the would-be assassin was an Englishman who thought he (the assassin, not the President) was King Richard III. His intended victim was Andrew Jackson.

Today, 30th January, in 1835, an unemployed English painter named Richard Lawrence stepped up to Jackson, who was leaving a funeral at the time. Lawrence squeezed the trigger  not once, but twice, with two different pistols, and both times the weapons misfired. Damp powder is blamed now, but at the it seemed miraculous. Jackson even set about his attacker with his cane!

Why Lawrence thought he was Richard isn’t known. Not to me, anyway. I’d have preferred it if Jackson was the one who thought he was Richard, and that when he set about Lawrence, he was setting about Henry VII! Ah, well…

Read a little more here …