#Attempted Assassination of William H. Seward

[deadpresidents]

The Seward attempt is wild because Powell tried to shoot (at point blank range) the first son that intercepted him but the gun jammed (at which point he bludgeoned the son with it and cracked his head open but he lived) and while he maimed Seward, the only reason he didn’t manage to kill him was because Seward rolled off the bed onto the floor and it was dark enough in the room that Powell couldn’t see very well. Seward’s bloodstained sheet is actually on display in the Seward House museum in Auburn NY in a room set up to look like Seward’s bedroom in his Washington house.

Seward had also been badly injured in a carriage accident a little over a week before the assassination attempt and was wearing a bandage or brace on his face to help heal a broken jaw.

The metal from the brace and the thick canvas of the bandages helped protect Seward when Powell started stabbing him. Seward was still nearly killed by Powell, but that probably kept the attack from being fatal. It's pretty remarkable that Seward not only survived, but eventually went back to work as Secretary of State and even bought Alaska!

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.18 (before 1920)

332 – Emperor Constantine the Great announces free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople. 872 – Louis II of Italy is crowned for the second time as Holy Roman Emperor at Rome, at the age of 47. His first coronation was 28 years earlier, in 844, during the reign of his father Lothair I. 1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany. 1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. He would become king two years later, after the death of his cousin once removed King Stephen of England. 1268 – The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Siege of Antioch. 1291 – Fall of Acre, the end of Crusader presence in the Holy Land. 1302 – Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia. 1388 – During the Battle of Buyur Lake, General Lan Yu leads a Ming army forward to crush the Mongol hordes of Tögüs Temür, the Khan of Northern Yuan. 1499 – Alonso de Ojeda sets sail from Cádiz on his voyage to what is now Venezuela. 1565 – The Great Siege of Malta begins, in which Ottoman forces attempt and fail to conquer Malta. 1593 – Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations of heresy lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe. 1631 – In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts. 1652 – Slavery in Rhode Island is abolished, although the law is not rigorously enforced. 1695 – The 1695 Linfen earthquake in Shannxi, Qing dynasty causes extreme damage and kills at least 52,000 people. 1756 – The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France. 1783 – First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown (later called Saint John, New Brunswick), Canada, after leaving the United States. 1794 – Battle of Tourcoing during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. 1803 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revokes the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France. 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate. 1811 – Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Río de la Plata in Uruguay led by José Artigas. 1812 – John Bellingham is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. 1843 – The Disruption in Edinburgh of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland. 1848 – Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt, Germany. 1860 – United States presidential election: Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State. 1863 – American Civil War: Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant begin the Siege of Vicksburg during the Vicksburg campaign in order to take full control of the Mississippi River. 1896 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional. 1896 – Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people. 1900 – The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga. 1912 – The first Indian film, Shree Pundalik by Dadasaheb Torne, is released in Mumbai. 1917 – World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription.

[ladytp]

These pictures are amazing! So timeless and contemporary - just as if they would have been taken very recently... Below just a few examples that fascinated me because of how vivid they are, and also because of the stories and subjects.

Lewis Powell, 21, in a cell onboard a U.S. Navy ship in Washington, D.C. after his arrest on April 17, 1865 for the attempted murder of Secretary of State William H. Seward during part of the larger plot responsible for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Soldiers playing football in no man’s land during The Christmas Truce, a series of unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of World War I around Christmas 1914.

President Abraham Lincoln stands on the battlefield at Antietam, Maryland with Allan Pinkerton (the famed military intelligence operative who essentially invented the Secret Service, left) and Major General John A. McClernand (right) on Oct. 3, 1862.

Thank you @musicboxmemories​ for making me aware of these!

[dislocated-thumbs]

some rarer photos of William H. Seward and his family I like a lot that I found randomly in Google Images and some websites dedicated to him :)

(two of him in his later years with scars from his assassination attempt in 1865 showing)

(his wife, Frances)

 (two photos of him with his daughter, Fanny)

(a photo of him and some more of one of his sons, William Jr.)

(his adopted daughter, Olive Risley)

(Olive and her sister, Harriet)

(a few photos of the Seward family at their Auburn home)

[patriotsnet]

Why Did The Republicans Win The 1860 Presidential Election

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-did-the-republicans-win-the-1860-presidential-election/

Why Did The Republicans Win The 1860 Presidential Election

Q: Why Did The Republican Party Choose Lincoln As Its Candidate

The American Presidential Election of 1860

A: Republican leaders met in Chicago in May 1860 to choose a presidential nominee. Attention focused above all on Senator William H Seward, the former governor of New York, who was widely expected to carry the day. But his reputation for radicalism, recently heightened by a speech depicting the struggle between slave and free societies as an irrepressible conflict, put doubts in the minds of Republican managers. Could he win the support of essential conservative voters in those states of the lower North who had previously blocked the partys route to power?

Sewards supporters took comfort from the handicaps under which most of his rivals laboured. Edward Bates of Missouri was too conservative, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania too corrupt, Supreme Court justice John McLean too old, Salmon P Chase of Ohio too radical. But Seward had not reckoned on the dark horse, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincolns seven open-air debates with Stephen Douglas across Illinois in 1858, in pursuit of election to the United States senate, had won him national attention

Listen: Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch discuss a little-known attempt to kill Abraham Lincoln in 1861, just prior to his inauguration as president, on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast:

Osawatomie John Brown And The Raid On Harpers Ferry

When the abolitionist John Brown arrived in Kansas Territory in 1855, he joined a growing band of settlers from the North who hoped to keep slavery and slaveholders out. Yet unlike most antislavery partisans, who wielded words, petitions, and moral suasion to attack the Souths peculiar institution, Brown arrived with weapons and a willingness to use violence to keep Kansas free. Before Browns appearance on the scene, proslavery settlers and neighboring Missourians made successful use of intimidation and fraud to win territorial elections.

For the next four years, Brown worked to make the territory bleed with deadly attacks on proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek and in clashes with armed militiamen and their deputies at the battles of Black Jack and Osawatomie. He left the territory in early 1859, intending to take his war against slavery into Virginia, where he planned to incite a slave rebellion in the Appalachian Mountains.

Several of Browns comrades in his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry had ridden with him in Kansas, and it was under the guise of carrying out additional violence in Kansas that Brown raised funds from New Englanders for the raid. While the raid itself turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, Browns foray into Virginia had far-reaching political implications for the entire nation already in the midst of the 1860 presidential campaign.

Q: What Part Did The Election Outcome Play In The Coming Of Civil War

A: War followed upon southern secession because Lincoln, supported by a majority of northerners, refused to concede that any of his fellow countrymen had a constitutional right of withdrawal from a perpetual Union, and certainly not in response to a democratic election fairly contested and legitimately won. When in early April 1861 Lincoln sent an unarmed vessel to resupply a federal fort in Charleston harbour, the Confederate batteries opened fire. As Lincoln later put it: Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.

The war, then, was about the survival of the nation and, in its early stages at least, not about the survival or death of slavery. But the election of 1860 revealed the huge fissure between North and South over their incompatible understandings of the peculiar institutions future in the republic. That fissure had grown more profound since the annexation of Texas and the Mexican cession had raised fundamental questions about the status of slavery in the new acquisitions. The political contention reached its climax in the election of 1860.

Whatever the later claims of Confederates and their modern successors, the crisis of the Union of 186165 was not about states rights in the abstract. It was about the apparent threat to the power of the slave states to regulate their domestic institutions.

What if Abraham Lincoln hadnt been assassinated?

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On This Day The Republican Party Names Its First Candidates

On July 6, 1854, disgruntled voters in a new political party named its first candidates to contest the Democrats over the issue of slavery. Within six and one-half years, the newly christened Republican Party would control the White House and Congress as the Civil War began.

For a brief time in the decade before the Civil War, the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and his descendants enjoyed a period of one-party rule. The Democrats had battled the Whigs for power since 1836 and lost the presidency in 1848 to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. After Taylor died in office in 1850, it took only a few short years for the Whig Party to collapse dramatically.

There are at least three dates recognized in the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, built from the ruins of the Whigs. The first is February 24, 1854, when a small group met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to discuss its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The group called themselves Republicans in reference to Thomas Jeffersons Republican faction in the American republics early days. Another meeting was held on March 20, 1854, also in Ripon, where 53 people formally recognized the movement within Wisconsin.

On July 6, 1854, a much-bigger meeting in Jackson, Michigan was attended by about 10,000 people and is considered by many as the official start of the organized Republican Party. By the end of the gathering, the Republicans had compiled a full slate of candidates to run in Michigans elections.

The 1858 Midterm Election

There is always a lull after a tempest, and so the political world has subsided into an unwonted calm since the election, commented a reporter for The New York Times. The Republicans are naturally . . . exultant over their sweeping victories. Such a commentary might apply to any number of elections, but this reporter described the outcome of a particularly historic electionthe midterm election of 1858. The Republican success that year was especially remarkable because the Republican Party was only four years old.

Almost by spontaneous combustion, the Republican Party burst forth in 1854 in response to the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act. For decades, Americas political battles had been fought between the Democrats and the Whigs. By the early 1850s, however, the issue of slavery had splintered the Whigs into warring factions and divided Democrats between north and south. When Democratic senator Stephen Douglas pushed his Kansas-Nebraska bill to passage, including its proposal to settle the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty, the uproar among northern abolitionists and anti-slavery activists was too fierce to be contained by the ailing Whig Party. As one person commented, The Whigs were simply not angry enough.

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Who Was Our 19th President

As the 19th President of the United States , Rutherford B. Hayes oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War. Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Rutherford B.

Why Did Lincoln Think Secession Was Unconstitutional

He gave several reasons, among them his belief that secession was unlawful, the fact that states were physically unable to separate, his fears that secession would cause the weakened government to descend into anarchy, and his steadfast conviction that all Americans should be friends towards one another, rather than

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The Rival Candidates In 1860

In the 1860 election, the Democratic Party split into two factions. The northern Democrats nominated Lincolns perennial rival, Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckenridge, the incumbent vice president, a pro-enslavement man from Kentucky.

Those who felt they could support neither party, mainly disaffected former Whigs and members of the Know-Nothing Party, formed the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee.

Who Were The Candidates In The United States Presidential Election Of 1860

The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was the candidate of the generally antislavery Republican Party. The Democratic Party split in two. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the champion of popular sovereignty policy, was the Northern Democrats candidate, and Vice Pres. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky was the candidate of the Southern Democrats, whose campaign was based on the demand for federal legislation and intervention to protect slaveholding. Sen. John Bell of Tennessee was the candidate of the new Constitutional Union Party, the political home for former Whigs and other moderates who rallied to support the Union and the Constitution without regard to slavery.

United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on November 6, 1860, in which RepublicanAbraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, DemocratStephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery, and in the months following Lincolns election seven Southern states, led by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War .

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Constitutional Union Party Nomination

Former SenatorWilliam C. Rives from Virginia

The Constitutional Union Party was formed by remnants of both the defunct Know Nothing and Whig Parties who were unwilling to join either the Republicans or the Democrats. The new party’s members hoped to stave off Southern secession by avoiding the slavery issue. They met in the Eastside District Courthouse of Baltimore and nominated John Bell from Tennessee for president over GovernorSam Houston of Texas on the second ballot. Edward Everett was nominated for vice-president at the convention on May 9, 1860, one week before Lincoln.

John Bell was a former Whig who had opposed the KansasNebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. Edward Everett had been president of Harvard University and Secretary of State in the Millard Fillmore administration. The party platform advocated compromise to save the Union with the slogan “The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is.”

What Were The Key Issues In The Election Of 1800

1800 Presidential Election

Central issues included opposition to the tax imposed by Congress to pay for the mobilization of the new army and the navy in the Quasi-War against France in 1798, and the Alien and Sedition acts, by which Federalists were trying to stifle dissent, especially by Republican newspaper editors.

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Q: Who Were The Republicans

A: Like all political parties, the new Republican organisation was a coalition. Its constituent elements emerged from the fractured politics of the mid-1850s that created a political vacuum by destroying the Whig party and weakening their rivals, the Democrats. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the work of US senator Stephen A Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, opened up to slave-holding settlers a vast trans-Mississippi region previously deemed the preserve of free labour. The immediate explosion of anger in the North prompted state-level anti-Nebraska coalitions of disaffected Democrats, antislavery Whigs, independent free-soilers, and out-and-out abolitionists. At the same time an influx of immigrants, many of them Catholic, prompted a native-born backlash that further strained political loyalties.

The emergent Republican Partys opposition to the extension of slavery provided the policy glue that bound its elements together: radical emancipationists driven by moral purpose, racists determined to found lily-white western settlements, social progressives who deemed the South archaic and stagnant, and opponents of the political influence of southern planters the so-called Slave Power that had allegedly hijacked the federal government.

From Lincoln to Trump: a brief history of the US Republican Party

How Did Abraham Lincolns Election Caused The Civil War

A former Whig, Lincoln ran on a political platform opposed to the expansion of slavery in the territories. His election served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1865, Lincoln was instrumental in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional.

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National Republican Platform Adopted By The National Republican Convention Held In Chicago May 17 1860 Chicago Press And Tribune Office Chicago Illinois 1860 Library Of Congress Rare Book And Special Collections Division Alfred Whital Stern Collection Of Lincolniana Https: //googl/lcbfpa

Resolved, that we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:

That the history of the nation during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.

That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States must and shall be preserved.

. . .

Republican Platform Of 1860. A reprint of the original broadside containing the Republican Platform of 1860, adopted by the National Republican Convention held in Chicago, 1860. Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbpe.0180010b.

Study Questions

What Were The 3 Main Parts Of The Dred Scott Decision

Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing for a 7-2 majority, articulated three major conclusions: 1) the decision held that free blacks in the North could never be considered citizens of the United States, and thus were barred from the federal courts; 2) the decision declared that the ban in slavery in territories considered

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Abraham Lincoln’s Wartime Run

Lincoln and Johnson’s 1864 campaign banner.

When Lincoln first ran for president in 1860, it was his Republican Party that had a stronghold in the north, and the Democratic Party that had found popularity in the south. When 11 southern states seceded to join the Confederacy, the Republican Party became the Unions dominant political party. Even so, for the 1864 election, the Republican Party decided to join forces with some Democrats to form the National Union Party.

Despite concerns about Lincolns electability, the National Union backed him as its presidential candidate. Yet notably, Lincoln ditched his current Republican vice president to run with Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who had previously supported slavery, in an attempt to balance the ticket.

Q: Why Did The Democratic Party Split

The Election of 1860 Explained

A: Enthusiastic expansionists, the Democrats as a national party had to fashion a policy for the western territories that would minister to the incompatible ambitions of free-soil and pro-slavery settlers. For a time Stephen Douglass formula of popular sovereignty leaving the settlers themselves to resolve the issue by a local vote kept northern and southern Democrats happy. But the doctrine was inherently ambiguous: as a unifying principle it could not survive the civil war between pro-slavery and free-soil settlers in bleeding Kansas or President Buchanans feeble yielding to supporters of a pro-slavery constitution there. Douglass political survival in Illinois and the wider North forced him to turn against the national administration.

Even so, as the countrys leading Democrat he expected to win his partys presidential nomination in 1860. By then, however, influential southerners had jettisoned popular sovereignty and, emboldened by the Supreme Courts landmark decision in the Dred Scott case , had begun to call for federal legal protection of slavery in the territories. The partys fraught national conventions saw it split over the issue of a federal slave code, leaving Douglas to fight the election as the candidate of the regular Democrats, and the Kentucky slave-owner, John C Breckinridge, to stand as the representative of southern radicals who stood ready to countenance quitting the Union if they did not get their way.

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Who Caused The Civil War

What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict. A key issue was states rights.

Background To The Election Of 1860

The central issue of the presidential election of 1860 was destined to be enslavement. Battles over the spread of enslavement to new territories and states had gripped the United States since the late 1840s, when the United States obtained vast tracts of land following the Mexican War.

In the 1850s the enslavement issue became extremely heated. The passage of the Fugitive Slave act as part of the Compromise of 1850 inflamed northerners. And the 1852 publication of an extraordinarily popular novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, brought the political debates over enslavement into American living rooms.

And the passage of the of the;Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854;became a turning point in Lincoln’s life.

Following the passage of the controversial legislation,;Abraham Lincoln, who had essentially given up on politics after one unhappy term in Congress in the late 1840s, felt compelled to return to the political arena. In his home state of Illinois, Lincoln began speaking out against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and particularly its author, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

When Douglas ran for reelection in 1858, Lincoln opposed him in Illinois. Douglas won that election. But the seven Lincoln-Douglas Debates they held across Illinois were mentioned in newspapers around the country, raising Lincolns political profile.

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[aiiaiiiyo]

Lewis Powell, 1865, shortly before his execution. Also known as Lewis Payne and Lewis Paine, was an American citizen who attempted to assassinate United States Secretary of State William H. Seward on April 14, 1865. He was a conspirator with John Wilkes Booth 1438x1800 Check this blog!

[stupendousrebelpuppy]

THIS DAY IN HISTORY MARCH 30

Encyclopædia Britannica

FEATURED EVENT

1981 – Failed assassination attempt against U.S. President Ronald Reagan In Washington, D.C., on this day in 1981, barely two months after his inauguration as the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassin John W. Hinckley, Jr.

1867 – William H. Seward, secretary of state under U.S.…

[deadpresidents]

Was Trump's assassination attempt the first time people other than the president were also killed or hurt?

No, it definitely was not the first time. There have been a number of additional victims during Presidential assassinations or assassination attempts throughout American history.

Here are the incidents where someone other than the President was wounded in an assassination attempt on Presidents or Presidential candidates:

•April 14, 1865, Washington, D.C. At the same time that John Wilkes Booth was shooting Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Booth's fellow conspirator, Lewis Powell, attacked Secretary of State William H. Seward at Seward's home in Washington. Seward had been injured earlier that month in a carriage accident and was bedridden from his injuries, and Powell viciously stabbed the Secretary of State after forcing his way into Seward's home by pretending to deliver medicine. Powell also attacked two of Seward's sons, a male nurse from the Army who was helping to care for Seward, and a messenger from the State Department. Another Booth conspirator, George Azterodt, was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the same time that Lincoln and Seward were being attacked in an attempt to decapitate the senior leadership of the Union government, but Azterodt lost his nerve and got drunk instead. A total of five people were wounded at the Seward home as part of the Booth conspiracy, but Lincoln was the only person who was killed.

•February 15, 1933, Miami, Florida Just 17 days before his first inauguration, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt in Miami's Bayfront Park. Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt as FDR was speaking from an open car. Roosevelt was not injured, but all five bullets hit people in the crowd, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was in the car with FDR. Roosevelt may have been saved by a woman in the crowd who hit Zangara's arm with her purse as she noticed he was aiming his gun at the President-elect and caused him to shoot wildly. Mayor Cermak was gravely wounded and immediately rushed to a Miami hospital where he died about two weeks later.

•November 1, 1950, Blair House, Washington, D.C. From 1949-1952, the White House was being extensively renovated with the interior being almost completely gutted and reconstructed. President Harry S. Truman and his family moved into Blair House, a Presidential guest house across the street from the White House that is normally used for visiting VIPs, for 3 1/2 years. On November 1, 1950 two Puerto Rican nationalists, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, tried to shoot their way into Blair House and attempt to kill President Truman, who was upstairs (reportedly napping) at the time. A wild shootout ensued on Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt and Torresola dead, and Collazo and two other White House Police Officers wounded.

•November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas Texas Governor John Connally was severely wounded after being shot while riding in the open limousine with President John F. Kennedy when JFK was assassinated.

•June 5, 1968, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California When he finished delivering a victory speech after winning California's Democratic Presidential primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York was shot several times while walking through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. While RFK was mortally wounded and would die a little over a day later, five other people were also wounded in the shooting.

•May 15, 1972, Laurel, Maryland Segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by Arthur Bremer at a campaign rally when he was running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Three bystanders were also wounded in the shooting, but survived.

•September 22, 1975, San Francisco, California A taxi driver in San Francisco was wounded when Sara Jane Moore attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford as he left the St. Francis Hotel. Moore's first shot missed the President by several inches and the second shot, which hit the taxi driver, was altered when a Vietnam veteran in the crowd named Oliver Sipple grabbed her arm as she was firing. Just 17 days earlier and 90 miles away, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson family, had tried to shoot President Ford as he walked through Capitol Park in Sacramento but nobody was injured.

•March 30, 1981, Washington, D.C. President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by as he left the Washington Hilton after giving a speech. Three other people were wounded in the shooting, including White House Press Secretary James Brady who was shot in the head and partially paralyzed, Washington D.C. Police Office Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. Video of the assassination attempt shows that when the shots were fired, McCarthy turned and made himself a bigger target in order to shield the President with his own body. President Reagan was struck by a bullet that ricocheted off of the Presidential limousine.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.18

332 – Emperor Constantine the Great announces free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople. 872 – Louis II of Italy is crowned for the second time as Holy Roman Emperor at Rome, at the age of 47. His first coronation was 28 years earlier, in 844, during the reign of his father Lothair I. 1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany. 1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. He would become king two years later, after the death of his cousin once removed King Stephen of England. 1268 – The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Siege of Antioch. 1291 – Fall of Acre, the end of Crusader presence in the Holy Land. 1302 – Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia. 1388 – During the Battle of Buyur Lake, General Lan Yu leads a Ming army forward to crush the Mongol hordes of Tögüs Temür, the Khan of Northern Yuan. 1499 – Alonso de Ojeda sets sail from Cádiz on his voyage to what is now Venezuela. 1565 – The Great Siege of Malta begins, in which Ottoman forces attempt and fail to conquer Malta. 1593 – Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations of heresy lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe. 1631 – In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts. 1652 – Slavery in Rhode Island is abolished, although the law is not rigorously enforced. 1695 – The 1695 Linfen earthquake in Shannxi, Qing dynasty causes extreme damage and kills at least 52,000 people. 1756 – The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France. 1783 – First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown (later called Saint John, New Brunswick), Canada, after leaving the United States. 1794 – Battle of Tourcoing during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. 1803 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revokes the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France. 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate. 1811 – Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Río de la Plata in Uruguay led by José Artigas. 1812 – John Bellingham is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. 1843 – The Disruption in Edinburgh of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland. 1848 – Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt, Germany. 1860 – United States presidential election: Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State. 1863 – American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg begins. 1896 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional. 1896 – Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people. 1900 – The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga. 1912 – The first Indian film, Shree Pundalik by Dadasaheb Torne, is released in Mumbai. 1917 – World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription. 1926 – Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears in Venice, California. 1927 – The Bath School disaster: Forty-five people, including many children, are killed by bombs planted by a disgruntled school-board member in Bath Township, Michigan. 1927 – After being founded for 20 years, the Nationalist government approves Tongji University to be among the first national universities of the Republic of China. 1933 – New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1944 – World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino: Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers evacuate Monte Cassino. 1944 – Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union. 1948 – The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking. 1953 – Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier. 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ends. 1965 – Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus, Syria. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 is launched. 1973 – Aeroflot Flight 109 is hijacked mid-flight and the aircraft is subsequently destroyed when the hijacker's bomb explodes, killing all 82 people on board. 1974 – Nuclear weapons testing: Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so. 1977 – Likud party wins the 1977 Israeli legislative election, with Menachem Begin, its founder, as the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage. 1980 – Students in Gwangju, South Korea begin demonstrations calling for democratic reforms. 1990 – In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3 km/h (320.2 mph). 1991 – Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland. 1993 – Riots in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in the Maastricht Treaty referendum. Police open fire against civilians for the first time since World War II and injure 11 demonstrators. 1994 – Israeli troops finish withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, ceding the area to the Palestinian National Authority to govern. 2005 – A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons, Nix and Hydra. 2006 – The post Loktantra Andolan government passes a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country. 2009 – The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides. 2015 – At least 78 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar. 2018 – A school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas kills ten people. 2018 – Cubana de Aviación Flight 972 crashes in Santiago de las Vegas after takeoff from José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, killing 112 of the 113 people on board. 2019 – United States presidential election: Joe Biden announces his presidential campaign.

[allthingslincoln]

Today, February 23, in 1861, Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington D.C. to be inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States.

It was also a day that Lincoln grew to regret more than any other in his life.

On board of a night train from Baltimore the president-elect arrived secretly at 6 o’clock in the morning, the spectacular 13 day journey cut short in Harrisburg the day before after rumors of an assassination attempt had alerted Lincoln’s security detail and he was convinced by friends and advisors to skip the stop in Baltimore.

What would become known as the “Baltimore Plot” was at first discovered by detective Allen Pinkerton who relayed his findings to Abraham Lincoln’s close friend and bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon.

For several days, Pinkerton pestered Lincoln to take safety measures – he was turned down every time.

It wasn’t until the party’s arrival in Philadelphia when Lincoln stopped to listen.

However, he wasn’t giving his ear to Pinkerton but a young man who had come to meet him from Washington.

Frederick Seward had accompanied his father, whom he served as secretary, to Washington in order to help William H. Seward decide on whether he would take the call as Secretary of State in Lincoln’s cabinet. 

While the older Seward was still mulling over the question, Colonel Charles P. Stone and General Winfield Scott had amassed some highly alerting intel concerning an assassination attempt in Baltimore on Lincoln. They took their information to Seward who promptly send his son with a letter of warning to Lincoln’s next stop.

Having waited several hours for Lincoln to give him a moment of his time, Frederick Seward was questioned intensely by Lincoln about where the information his father had send originated from.

As Frederick Seward remembered later, Lincoln was afraid that he’d be listening to the same story being told twice:

“If different persons, not knowing of each other's work, have been pursuing separate clues that led to the same result, why then it shows there may be something in it. But if this is only the same story, filtered through two channels, and reaching me in two ways, then that don't make it any stronger.”

Assuring him that both investigations had been conducted independently of each other, young Seward was sent on his way with mildly reassuring words:

“You need not think I will not consider it well. I shall think it over carefully, and try to decide it right; and I will let you know in the morning”.

In hindsight it becomes quite obvious that Lincoln was thinking about how to proceed the next morning.

Attending a flag raising at Independence Hall for Washington’s Birthday, Lincoln exclaimed that:

“I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. (...) It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it.

If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

Baltimore, a hotbed of secessionist activity, was now on everybody’s mind concerning Lincoln’s security on the last leg of the trip.

Finally convinced that an appearance in the city would be too much a risk to take, Lincoln – together with Lamon and Pinkerton - boarded a secret train to Washington, only changing tracks in Baltimore.

The media, of course, had a field day once the ploy became public. Accusing the president-elect of sneaking into Washington like a cowardly thief with various caricatures to underline their claim, the story was fodder for several days. Lincoln was pained by the scathing reports like this one from the Baltimore Sun:

“We do not believe the Presidency can ever be more degraded by any of his successors than it has by him, even before his inauguration."

Especially humiliating was the fact that the ardently Republican newspaper The New York Times joined the chorus and allowed correspondent Joseph Howard to report false claims about various disguises that Lincoln had used.

The experience was so harrowing that from this day on Abraham Lincoln rejected attempts to provide him with any sort of personal security detail.

When forced to accept at least a small guard for his trips between the White House and his summer residence just north of Washington, Lincoln regularly evaded them as well as Ward Hill Lamon, his close friend and self-proclaimed bodyguard. 

Tensions between the two men over this topic peaked in December of 1864 when Lamon spontaneously quit his job and gave the following reason:

“To-night, as you have done on several previous occasions, you went unattended to the theatre.”

Lincoln apologized, promised to do better and Lamon took the job back – just so they could start the quarrel all over.

[livesinyesterday]

Ponderings About the Consumption of  Historical Films and TV Shows

I am going to start this by admitting that I am a history student. I’ve completed two master’s degrees and am currently gearing up to begin a PhD on medieval medicine. I am also obsessive about Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward and any and all my spare reading is dedicated to them. As a history student it is impossible to avoid discussion of the representation of historical events and figures in the media. On any number of occasions I am asked about my thoughts on shows like The Tudors, The Borgias, HBO’s Rome, etc. and films such as Elizabeth and The King’s Speech. I am often asked if I get annoyed by the “sex-ing up” of history in some things or the glaring historical inaccuracies in others.  I also frequently encounter the disdain that “serious” historians have for people who enjoy these series and films. Particularly in the university setting. 

If I am honest, I am torn on these issues. For starters, some of my favorite films are historical films. Spielberg’s 2012 film ‘Lincoln’ is likely my favorite film of all time and in terms of historical accuracy it is extremely well done by Hollywood standards, much due to the fact that Doris Kearns Goodwin, the author of “Team of Rivals”, was directly involved in the process. But I will also confess that I love some less historically accurate films, for example ‘Gladiator’ whose historical accuracy is laughable for the most part but nonetheless it is a good film.  However, I cannot pretend that I don’t get annoyed by certain issues that arise when directors attempt to approach history. Shows like The Tudors and The White Queen (or really anything Philippa Gregory has touched) I do not like whatsoever but they don’t annoy me because they don’t pretend to be more than they are. They are the “sexy” and “scandalous” version of history adjusted for mainstream consumption. They err towards the conspiracies rather than the hard facts. But generally people don’t watch them for hard history. They aren’t documentaries after all. What I don’t like are series and films that dress themselves up as serious historical narratives but then fail to do basic research or sneak in easy hollywood tricks to get more viewers (The Imitation Game is a good example of this.) And this annoys me for an odd reason. Its not necessarily because it is inaccurate, but its the audience reaction to these series/films. I love that films and tv have the ability to get people interested in history. That is wonderful. For so many people this is how their interest gets sparked. And I applaud them. I do not share in the disdain that some people in my department have for those who were drawn into history through Hollywood. BUT. What I DO hate is the attitude of some that “this is all I need to know.” The passive acceptance of movies and shows as hard facts with no interest in getting more information. And I encounter this all the time. Almost every day I am confronted with someone’s historical opinion that is actually founded on an inaccuracy they got from a movie and simply accepted as fact. Even a film as wonderful as Lincoln is, by virtue of the medium, somewhat inaccurate. They have to fit the historical moment to a timeline and therefore certain events and figures are ‘adjusted’. And admittedly that MUST be done for the sake of film. It is necessary for good captivating storytelling. But so much gets left out. A film like Lincoln is ‘incomplete’ history because of how much has to get left out. That doesn’t mean I love it any less, but it does mean that I want more information. And I hope it inspires other people to want more information. I would hope people would ask, if they didn’t already know (though sadly I find most people do not know enough or anything about Seward, which makes me sad), “Why isn’t Seward at Lincoln’s bedside after the assassination? Clearly Stanton is there” or “What are the relationships between Lincoln’s cabinet members. Why does Stanton storm out when Lincoln begins to tell a story?” Because there is so much important history there. And it is fun to learn I promise you.  So I do not ever look down on people who get interested in history through media. I don’t look down on people who enjoy historically inaccurate media either. You like what you like, I like what I like. But I do hope that history as presented by hollywood is taken with a grain of salt. Just because you saw it in a show or a movie doesn’t mean it is fact. Let your enjoyment of something inspire you to chase after the history for yourself. It is, at least in the biased opinion of a history student, an amazing journey to go on. 

[thetemplarknight]

Lewis Thornton Powell (sometimes known as Payne) was one of the four conspirators hanged for their part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Powell was tasked with killing US Secretary of State William H. Seward and managed to stab him several times but not fatally. In recent years, Powell has become noteworthy for the prison photographs taken at the time, which could easily grace the front cover of a men’s fashion magazine.

Although Powell was a very striking young man (only 21 when he was executed), he did have a record of violence including a horrific attack on an African American maid. Powell had also supervised his father’s slave plantation before fighting with the Confederate side in the American Civil War.

The manner in which he tried to slaughter Seward suggested an unbalanced mind. Seward was already bed ridden after a carriage accident and Powell found his way into the great man’s bedroom and stuck a blade into his neck several times. Amazingly, the Secretary of State survived and indeed went on to serve under Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson.

Powell was arrested very soon after his botched murder attempt. This led to the prison photos that included him dressing up in different suits. Quite why this was entertained by his captors is beyond me. His hanging was a gruesome affair with him taking at least five minutes to die. One eye witness claimed that he writhed at the end of the noose with such vigour that at one point his knees rose so he was in a seated position.

Here is Powell in his 1860s male model glory!

GQ model? No – one of the Abraham Lincoln conspirators! Lewis Thornton Powell (sometimes known as Payne) was one of the four conspirators hanged for their part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

[obtener2]

Lewis Thornton Powell, also known as Lewis Payne and Lewis Paine, attempted to assassinate United States Secretary of State William H. Seward on April 14, 1865. During Lincoln’s term there was no Secret Service.

A Family and Nation Under Fire, Kent State University Press

iBooks https://goo.gl/SAVc8A

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Amazon: https://goo.gl/A3brGd

KSU http://goo.gl/Z3z4Xs

Civil War Blogspot: https://t.co/fry4YwuUUp

[deadpresidents]

If the Lincoln assassination had happened in the 1900s or 2000s do you think there would have been conspiracy theories about it like the JFK assassination?

Abraham Lincoln's assassination really WAS part of a conspiracy. I feel that people sometimes forget what "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory" actually means and automatically think of some dark plot by the government when the actual definition is pretty straightforward:

John Wilkes Booth and his group of conspirators met at Mary Surratt's boarding house and initially considered kidnapping President Lincoln before deciding to kill him. The Booth conspiracy called for simultaneous attacks in Washington to decapitate the federal government: Booth was supposed to kill the President, George Atzerodt was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Lewis Powell/Paine was supposed to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. Another conspirator, David Herold, was meant to help Powell gain access to Seward's home and then lead the way for the conspirators during their escape from Washington.

While Booth succeeded in shooting the President, the rest of the conspiracy quickly fell apart. Atzerodt lost his nerve and got drunk, so he didn't even attempt to kill Vice President Johnson. Powell did gain admittance to Seward's home and very nearly killed the Secretary of State, but Seward somehow survived the vicious stabbing. Herold, who was waiting for Powell during the attack on Seward, also panicked and took off, leaving Powell to find his own way out of the nation's capital. Herold did hook up with Booth after Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre and helped Booth, who had broken his leg while jumping down from the Presidential box after shooting Lincoln, get out of Washington and escape into Virginia where the Confederate sympathizers expected to be safe and welcomed as heroes for killing Lincoln.

So, the events of the Lincoln assassination are pretty much the textbook definition of a conspiracy. And while Booth refused to surrender after being tracked down by Union soldiers and was eventually killed, Herold, Powell, and Atzerodt were all arrested, as was Mary Surratt (the woman whose boarding house was where the conspirators had met and planned the assassination) and Dr. Samuel Mudd, a doctor who set Booth's broken leg in the hours after the assassination. All of the surviving conspirators were put on trial and convicted. Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, and Mrs. Surratt were sentenced to death and executed by hanging. Dr. Mudd narrowly avoided the death penalty, but was sentenced to prison along with three other men who were convicted of being complicit in the conspiracy but not involved deeply enough to warrant the death penalty.

There were rumors of a bigger conspiracy in the days immediately after the assassination. The Civil War had ended just six days before Lincoln's death, so there were questions about whether or not the Confederate government had played a role in the assassination. Even after Booth was hunted down and killed, the federal government considered Confederate President Jefferson Davis a suspected conspirator and issued a $100,000 reward for Davis's capture, with a poster suggesting that the Confederate President "incited and concerted the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, and the attack upon Mr. Seward".

Davis was eventually captured, but there was no evidence that the Confederate President -- or any other high-ranking officials of the Confederate government played a role in Lincoln's assassination. Davis himself would later suggest that "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known." Davis and the defeated Confederate leadership would have much rather preferred Lincoln's plans for Reconstruction than those of Andrew Johnson, who was the only Senator from one of the states that seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy who refused to join the rebellion and held on to his seat. As Davis would later write, "For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South. [Lincoln] had power over the Northern people, and was without personal malignity toward the people of the South; his successor [Andrew Johnson] was without power in the North, and the embodiment of malignity toward the Southern people, perhaps the more so because he had betrayed and deserted them in the hour of their need."

The only direct ties between the Confederate government and John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy seemed to be those of Mary Surratt's son, John, who was friends with Booth and introduced the actor to several of the conspirators. John Surratt was a Confederate spy, so he was suspected of involvement despite being out of state and in the north on the day of Lincoln's murder. When he was eventually put on trial for his involvement, Surratt admitted that he had been part of the earlier plan to kidnap Lincoln but did not join the plot to kill the President. Surratt was never convicted of being involved in the assassination.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.18

332 – Emperor Constantine the Great announces free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople. 872 – Louis II of Italy is crowned for the second time as Roman Emperor at Rome, at the age of 47. His first coronation was 28 years earlier, in 844, during the reign of his father Lothair I. 1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany. 1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. He would become king two years later, after the death of his cousin once removed King Stephen of England. 1268 – The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Siege of Antioch. 1291 – Fall of Acre, the end of Crusader presence in the Holy Land. 1302 – Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia. 1388 – During the Battle of Buyur Lake, General Lan Yu leads a Chinese army forward to crush the Mongol hordes of Tögüs Temür, the Khan of Northern Yuan. 1499 – Alonso de Ojeda sets sail from Cádiz on his voyage to what is now Venezuela. 1565 – The Great Siege of Malta begins, in which Ottoman forces attempt and fail to conquer Malta. 1593 – Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations of heresy lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe. 1631 – In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts. 1652 – Slavery in Rhode Island is abolished, although the law is not rigorously enforced. 1756 – The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France. 1783 – First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown (later called Saint John, New Brunswick), Canada, after leaving the United States. 1794 – Battle of Tourcoing during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. 1803 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revokes the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France. 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate. 1811 – Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Río de la Plata in Uruguay led by José Artigas. 1812 – John Bellingham is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. 1843 – The Disruption in Edinburgh of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland. 1848 – Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt, Germany. 1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State. 1863 – American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg begins. 1896 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional. 1896 – Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people. 1900 – The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga. 1912 – The first Indian film, Shree Pundalik by Dadasaheb Torne, is released in Mumbai. 1917 – World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription. 1926 – Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears in Venice, California. 1927 – The Bath School disaster: Forty-five people, including many children, are killed by bombs planted by a disgruntled school-board member in Michigan. 1927 – After being founded for 20 years, the Government of the Republic of China approves Tongji University to be among the first national universities of the Republic of China. 1933 – New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1944 – World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino: Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers evacuate Monte Cassino. 1944 – Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union government. 1948 – The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking. 1953 – Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier. 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ends. 1965 – Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus, Syria. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 is launched. 1973 – Aeroflot Flight 109 is hijacked mid-flight and the aircraft is subsequently destroyed when the hijacker's bomb explodes, killing all 82 people on board. 1974 – Nuclear weapons testing: Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so. 1977 – Likud party wins the 1977 Israeli legislative election, with Menachem Begin, its founder, as the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage. 1980 – Students in Gwangju, South Korea begin demonstrations calling for democratic reforms. 1990 – In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3 km/h (320.2 mph). 1991 – Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is not recognized by the international community. 1993 – Riots in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in the Maastricht Treaty referendum. Police open fire against civilians for the first time since World War II and injure 11 demonstrators. 1994 – Israeli troops finish withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, ceding the area to the Palestinian National Authority to govern. 2005 – A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons, Nix and Hydra. 2006 – The post Loktantra Andolan government passes a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country. 2009 – The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides. 2015 – At least 78 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar. 2018 – A school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas kills ten people.