1964: The Warren Commission Declares Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman in the Kennedy Assassination

On September 27, 1964, the Warren Commission delivered its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, concluding after a ten month inquiry that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in firing the shots that killed the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

The commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and formed by executive order of President Lyndon Johnson, found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, and determined that Jack Ruby likewise acted alone when he shot Oswald dead two days after the assassination while Oswald was in police custody.

The report’s single bullet theory, used to explain the wounds suffered by both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally from one shot, became the most disputed element of the findings and fueled decades of public skepticism and rival conspiracy theories that persist to this day.

Lee Harvey Oswald Mural, Bishop Arts District, Dallas, Texas. Pictured is a mural on the side of the Members Only barber shop in the Bishop Arts District, Dallas, Texas. It features Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated president John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was arrested a short time later in the Texas Movie Theatre in Oak Cliff. It was painted by renowned Dallas muralist, Theo Ponchaveli. The Bishop Arts District is a small shopping and entertainment district in north Oak Cliff, immediately southwest of Downtown Dallas. It was originally developed as warehouses and shops in the 1920s. | ID 112938931 © David Pillow | Dreamstime.com
ID 112938931 © David Pillow | Dreamstime.com

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1901: President McKinley’s Killer Sentenced to Death After Jury Deliberates Barely an Hour

Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley on 6 September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, firing two shots from a revolver he had concealed inside a handkerchief. McKinley lingered for eight days before dying of his wounds on 14 September.

Czolgosz’s trial opened on 23 September. The jury took less than an hour to find him guilty, and on 26 September he was sentenced to death. He was executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison on 29 October 1901, and prison officials later poured acid into his coffin to prevent the grave becoming a shrine.

Czolgosz showed no remorse for the killing. From the scaffold he declared, “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people, the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”

Leon F Czolgosz in Jail
Leon F Czolgosz in Jail

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1975: The Bystander Who Saved a President: Second Failed Attempt on Gerald Ford in San Francisco

Just seventeen days after Lynette Fromme aimed a pistol at Gerald Ford in Sacramento, a second attempt on the president’s life unfolded outside a hotel in San Francisco on September 22, 1975. Sarah Jane Moore, a 45-year-old activist and FBI informant, fired a single shot from a .38 revolver at Ford as he left the St. Francis Hotel, missing him by only a few feet.

The shot went wide largely because of a bystander, former Marine Oliver Sipple, who was standing nearby and grabbed Moore’s arm as she fired, deflecting her aim. Moore was wrestled to the ground and arrested at the scene.

She pleaded guilty to attempted assassination of a president and was sentenced to life in prison. Moore later expressed regret over the attempt, and she was eventually paroled in 2007 after more than three decades behind bars.

Gerald Ford portrait in the Michigan State Capitol at 100 N Capitol Avenue in Lansing, Michigan | ID 103716497 © Glenn Nagel | Dreamstime.com
ID 103716497 © Glenn Nagel | Dreamstime.com

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1881: President James A. Garfield Dies 79 Days After an Assassin’s Bullet, Washington D.C.

James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot on July 2, 1881 at a Washington D.C. railway station by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled and mentally unstable office seeker who had been refused a political appointment.

The wound itself was not immediately fatal, but the president lingered for 79 days as infection set in, worsened by doctors repeatedly probing the injury with unsterilised fingers and instruments in the years before antiseptic surgery was widely practised in America. Garfield died on September 19, 1881, becoming the second American president assassinated in office after Abraham Lincoln.

Guiteau stood trial and was hanged the following year, reportedly declaring at his execution that he had acted for the good of the nation and that his death would be a great loss to politics.

Engraving of the assassination of President Garfield
Engraving of the assassination of President Garfield

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