Almost
In the spring of 1955, in the
early years of the Cold War, a fully-armed, supersonic Nike-guided missile was
accidentally fired over the Washington DC area from a base 14 miles outside the
city.
Battery C of the 36th
antiaircraft battalion, stationed at Fort Meade Maryland was raising a rocket
launcher at midday as part of a routine training exercise. The launcher was not
fully upright when the booster rocket fired, sending the missile zooming into
the air in the general direction of Southeast Washington DC. However, the booster
separated and fell on a trailer park and fuel tank fragments tumbled onto the Baltimore-Washington
Parkway. The missile's nose section was found 500 yards from the launcher with
the guidance assembly still attached. Within minutes of the firing hundreds of soldiers
clad in hazardous-material moon suits descended on the new Baltimore-Washington
Parkway to collect and take away fragments of the rocket housing.
Military historian Merle T. Cole wrote
"Because no launch was intended, the pin of the launcher's forward yoke
support had not been removed. As the pin had not been removed, the yoke
remained in place when the Ajax took off, tearing out the No. 3 Tunnel or
fairing strip covering essential wiring on the missile's side. This damage
rendered the missile warheads inoperative and prevented an explosion."
An enormous federal investigation
by a dozen different agencies found the cause of the launch was a short circuit
caused by rain getting into an electrical junction box.
Another Almost
On January 30, 1835, as President
Andrew Jackson walked out of the Capitol building’s east portico after
attending the funeral of U.S. Representative Warren Davis. At that same moment
a man named Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter from England who
suffered from mental defects, calmly walked up to the President, pulled out a
pistol, aimed and fired at Jackson. The
gun misfired and Lawrence pulled out another pistol and fired, but that too,
misfired, probably due to the heavy humidity.
Lawrence was then severely beaten
by the notoriously ill-tempered Jackson who whipped the man repeatedly with his
thick walking stick until he was pulled away by his aides. The man was then
taken away by three members of Congress that included Davy Crockett.
Under arrest, Lawrence told
doctors that he tried to kill Jackson because it was his fault he could not find
work as a house painter and with Jackson dead, the economy would improve. He
also said that he was the deposed English King Richard III (Who had died two
almost four hundred years before) He was diagnosed as insane and committed to
an insane asylum for the rest of his life.
In an early attempt on Jackson’s
life, the first attempt to assassinate a sitting US President, happened on May
6, 1833 by a man named Robert B. Randolph, whom Jackson had tossed out of the
US Navy for embezzling pay role monies.
On
May 6, Jackson arrived to the port at Alexandria to take a ship to
Fredericksburg to pay homage to Mary Ball Washington. However, Randolph rushed
from a crowd and punched Jackson and ran. He was chased down bystanders
(Including Washington Irving) captured and arrested but Jackson dropped the
charges.
Almost again
In August of 1864, President Abe
Lincoln was riding in his carriage through downtown Washington, when someone,
it isn’t known who, fired a shot that put a bullet hole through the President
stove-hat but missed him. Had Lincoln
been killed, the government would have fallen into the hands of the wildly
inept Vice President Hannibal Hamlin.
A spend thrift of the people’s
money for his own comforts and noted for his political cronyism, Hamlin had
been picked by the Republican Party because the Lincoln ticket needed an East
Coast politician to balance the Midwestern Lincoln. Before his nomination,
Hamlin had never met Lincoln.
During most of his time in office
as Vice President, Hamlin spent most of his time with his family in his native
Maine, yet he had the nerve to complain to his wife that he was "the most
unimportant man in Washington, ignored by the President, the cabinet, and
Congress." Lincoln dropped Hamlin from his ticket when he ran for a second
term.