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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

33. Planning the Assassination of President Truman

Puerto Rico’s National Guard occupying a town after the failed uprising. Pintrest

The failed uprising in Puerto Rico frustrated PRNP activists. In the Bronx, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, were further angered by what they saw as excessive force by the US military to beat back the rebels. So they decided to retaliate – and draw attention to their cause – with an assassination of the American president.

The gutted interior of the White House during its 1950 renovation. Wikimedia

At the time, Truman was not living in the White House, which was undergoing a renovation, but in the nearby – and less secure – Blair House. Torresola, an experienced gunman, secured a Walther P38 pistol and a German Luger, and taught the less experienced Collazo how to load and handle them. The duo then caught a train from NYC to Washington, DC, to reconnoiter. On November 1^st, 1950, they sprang into action.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.