In the comments to a previous article, Gary Utter notes that "...there have been 43 Presidents of the United States, and 8 have died in office. That is a fatality rate of 19%."
I doubt that many military men would love those odds.
Furthermore, an impressive number have also survived failed attempts on their lives. Which leads me to my Trivia Questions of the Week:
1) For 50,000 Trivia Geek points, name the actress whom the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan was trying to impress.
2) For 75,000 Trivia Geek points, name the person who was arrested for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
3) For 100,000 Trivia Geek points, name the person whose wife stopped him from attempting to kill Richard Nixon in 1962. Note that the man in question was confused. He believed that Nixon was Vice President, even though Lyndon Johnson was the actual Vice President at that time.
4) For 1,000,000 Trivia Geek points, name the person who attempted to kill President Clinton by ramming an airplane into the White House.
5) For 10,000,000 Trivia Geek points, name the man who succeeded in assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
I ask #5 for no reason except than that I am fascinated by the fact that almost no one knows who that guy was, even though he is arguably the most important assassin of the 20th Century.
As always, honor binds all participants: if you do a web search for any of this, you automatically lose all points.
Also, as always, Ara Rubyan is not allowed to answer any questions. ;-)
1) Jodie Foster
I learned that last week, somewhere in BlogLand.
2)- 4) don't know
5) I know the assassin had a name like Princep or something like that. He was a member of a Serbian successionist group called Black Hand. I took a European History course last year.
I only know the first two (Foster and Fromme, no?) for sure, and the third one I have two guesses, Lee Harvey Oswald being the one I like best. (Indeed, was Manson actually married?)
Was the plane guy actually an assissination attempt, or just an idiot making some kind of a point?
As for 5, you are right, it's amazing this isn't one we all have burned into our memories. I can't recall if I ever even learned the name in history.
1. Jodie Foster
2. Lynette Fromm
3. Huh?
4. I used to use his name in a joke, don't remember either one now.
5. Gavril Princip, I think. (Although I suspect history will judge him to be the 2nd most significant assasin, with Lee Harvey Oswald coming in first.)
My favorite trivia in this line is "Who was Marius VanDerlubbe?"
1) Jodie Foster
2) Squeaky Fromm
3) No idea
4) No idea
5) Damn! Can't remember (it's on the
tip of my tongue, I swear)
...as always, Ara Rubyan is not allowed to answer any questions...
...of course, if I could actually do something with the goddam points I'd be pissed.
That said...
No one actually knows #3?
RE: #2 -- too easy. Two possible answers. I should point out that, in Sept. 1975, Ford assassins were taking numbers for better service.
Follow-up to #1: If the would-be assassin was trying to impress the actress, who did he think he was? Think about it. Two possible answers.
I am not prohibited from asking questions. Heh.
Actually, there were two attempts on Ford's life. Squeaky Fromme's gun, IIRC, never actually went off -- either there was no round under the hammer or it misfired.
Sarah Jane Moore's gun, however, did go off. That was in San Francisco, not very long after the Fromme attempt.
Fromme's escapade happened in Sacramento, as Ford was leaving an event hosted by the California Chamber of Commerce, where my mother worked at the time; she was at the event itself, in fact.
I did get Jodie Foster for #1, but 3 through 5 stumped me.
I dunno who Hinckley thought he was, but I remember all the talk about an obsession on his part with Robert DeNiro's starring role in Taxi Driver...
#5: Gavrillo Princip. Otherwise known as the man who started World War I.
Isn't #3 Lee Harvey Oswald?
Kevin:
You are correct. Hinkley was obsessed with Jody Foster because of the role she played in Taxi Driver. So you could say he thought he was either Robert DeNiro or perhaps Travis Bickle.
Here's a follow-up -- What real event was Taxi Driver verrrrrrrrrrrrrry loosely based on ...?
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1) Jody Foster was the actress.
2) Both Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore attempted to kill President Ford.
3) Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to kill Nixon. His wife stopped him.
4) No one has guessed this, I notice.
5) Gavrilo Princip killed the Archduke.
Massive points all around, although I hereby officially double the point value of #4. Also, 100,000 points to Ara for being a good sport, and posing such good followup questions.
Ara, I'd probably have a shot at answering if I'd ever seen the movie. No joy.
;-)
Oh, and by the way (re Gary Utter's observation in paragraph 1 of Dean's post), there have been "43 presidents", but only 42 men have actually been president.
1) For 50,000 Trivia Geek points, name the actress whom the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan was trying to impress.
A: Jody Foster
2) For 75,000 Trivia Geek points, name the person who was arrested for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
A: Charles Manson acolyte Squeaky From
5) For 10,000,000 Trivia Geek points, name the man who succeeded in assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
A: Gavrilo Princzip
Kevin McGehee:
Taxi Driver was verrrrrrrrry loosely based on the attempted assassination of George Wallace by Arthur Bremer at a Maryland shopping center in May of 1972.
Dean:
Who WAS the crackpot who crashed his plane onto the grounds of the White House?
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Easy enough to find. I won't post the answer but for anyone who is willing to give up their geek points here's a link:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V114/N40/crash.40w.html
Wow. Speaking of conspiracy theories:
http://www.geocities.com/roboplanes/cessna.html
"Remote controlled aircraft have been around since the late fifties, and can be flown from the ground with absolute precision. All that is needed is a reliable radio link to the target aircraft, and if the target aircraft gets out of normal radio range, a “shepherd” aircraft to act as a radio relay, or as airborne flight director. It is now beyond reasonable doubt that the WTC attack aircraft of 11 September 2001 were controlled in a similar manner, in this case utilizing a counter-hijack system known as “Home Run”." (emphasis added)
Yikes.
Ten million for Princip?! But surely some of the others are more obscure?
Re 3) I wonder who the source of that tale is.
It is patently absurd to imagine that Lee Oswald was so dumb that he thought Nixon was JFK's VP. Sounds like a story that Marina might have made up to make herself look good. As for the relative importance of Princip vs. Oswald, the Serb gets my vote for the 10 mil. Nothing JFK ever did or might have done had he lived could conceivably rival precipitating WW1 and its aftermath.
Nothing JFK ever did or might have done had he lived could conceivably rival precipitating WW1 and its aftermath.
Wrong. JFK did one thing that had a very far reaching effect on the US and by extension, the whole world.
He died.
He was not a terribly competent leader, nor a very good man. But he died before the public could learn that. He died, and Camelot died with him. The funk that that threw the country into has never lifted.
And it gave Lyndon Johnson the Presidency, and the really terrible legacy of the Johnson years is not VietNam, it is the War On Poverty.
I think there is a good chance that in another 100 years, THAT will be seen as a greater tragedy than WWI.
But if we are going to discuss that at any length, we need a new thread for it, i think.
Gary, I'm sorry, but that is absurd. WWI is the defining moment of the 20th century: it's the break point that separates it from the 19th. It set off a chain of events that are still ongoing pretty much everywhere. Indeed, as merely one small matter among countless others, it subsumes JFK because I profoundly doubt that, without the social upheaval it and WWII involved, the US would have elected a Catholic president that early.
Well, it's highly subjective to argue over what didn't happen that might have, had JFK not been assassinated. Although the subtext of all the media hype over the impact of that event is exactly that.
Me, I firmly believe he might have been vulnerable to defeat in 1964 if he'd lived. But it's all hypothetical anyway..
I'd like to point out: "Camelot" was a fiction invented by Jacquelyn Kennedy after her husband's murder. Those who knew Kennedy best have said that, had he heard about that "Camelot" business while he was still alive, he would have vomited. He was a fairly hard-bitten, conservative, and moderately cynical guy.