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The Mongols Dined Atop their Live Enemies and Other Fascinating Historic Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 2, 2020 36 min

Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol Empire — Mongols feasting atop captives. Pintrest

14. The Lunatic Who Tried to Assassinate Andrew Jackson

By the time he made it to the White House, Andrew Jackson’s reputation as a seriously dangerous dude to anger had been so well established, that only a lunatic would try to assault him. However, America never had a shortage of lunatics, and one of them became the first to attempt a presidential assassination by taking a shot at Jackson.

Richard Lawrence, a house painter, was in the habit of angrily muttering to himself about Andrew Jackson. On January 30^th, 1835, he was seen sitting in his shop, cackling to himself, before suddenly getting up and exiting, with the exclamation: “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it!” The “it” he referred to was killing Andrew Jackson.

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.