Storming of the US Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters last week was the latest episode of such events at the site. Here’s a timeline of some of these acts of violence at the Capitol
With a history dating back to a British arson attack in Washington during the War of 1812, the storming of the halls of the United States Congress by a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters on January 6 was the latest episode of such events at the US Capitol. Here’s a chronology of some of the most notorious acts of violence to flare at the Capitol, including shootings, bombings, a knife attack, a beating by cane and even an assassination attempt. (Image: Reuters)
1814 - Invading British forces torched the original Capitol building while it was still under construction, setting bonfires of furniture in the House of Representatives and the original Supreme Court chamber. (Image: U.S Library of Congress/Handout via Reuters)
1835 - In the first known attempt on a U.S. president's life, a disgruntled house painter tried to shoot Andrew Jackson as he emerged from a funeral in the House chamber. The assailant's two flintlock derringers both misfired, and an enraged Jackson clubbed the would-be assassin with his walking stick before the man was subdued. The suspect was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution. (Image: U.S Library of Congress/Handout via Reuters)
1856 - An abolitionist senator, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts (pictured), was savagely beaten with a cane by his South Carolina colleague, Preston Brooks, on the Senate floor after delivering a speech criticizing slavery. (Image: U.S Library of Congress/Handout via Reuters)
1915 - A former Harvard University German language professor used a timing device to detonate three sticks of dynamite in an empty Senate reception room during a holiday recess. The professor, angry that American financiers were aiding the British against Germany during World War One, then fled to New York, where he shot and slightly injured banker J.P. Morgan. He was subsequently captured and later took his own life in jail. (Image: U.S Library of Congress/Handout via Reuters)
1954 - A group of four armed Puerto Rican nationalists indiscriminately opened fire on the House floor from the visitors' gallery and unfurled a Puerto Rican flag. Five members of Congress were wounded. The four assailants - three men and a woman - were apprehended and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, which President Jimmy Carter commuted in 1979. (Image: Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives/Handout via Reuters)
1971 - A bomb planted by the radical antiwar group Weather Underground to protest the U.S.-backed invasion of Laos was detonated in a restroom on the Senate side of the Capitol, causing extensive damage but no casualties. (Image: U.S. Library of Congress/ Marion S. Trikosko/Handout via Reuters)
1983 - A bomb concealed under a bench outside the Senate chamber exploded, blowing the hinges off the door to the office of then-Senate Democratic leader Robert Byrd and damaging a portrait of renowned lawyer-statesman Daniel Webster. No one was hurt. A militant leftist group said it carried out the bombing in retaliation for U.S. military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. (Image: U.S. Senate Historical Office/Handout via Reuters)
1998 - An armed man stormed through a U.S. Capitol security checkpoint and opened fire, fatally wounding two police officers, and made his way to the Republican Whip's office of Representative Tom DeLay. A tourist also was injured. The two slain officers became the first private citizens to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. (Image: Reuters/Files)
2001 - United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers stormed the cockpit to overpower suicide hijackers, whose likely intended target was later determined by investigators to have been the U.S. Capitol. (Image: Reuters/Tim Shaffer)
2013 - A woman who tried to drive through a White House security checkpoint was chased by authorities to the Capitol, where she was shot dead. Her baby daughter was found unharmed in the vehicle. (Image: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
2021 - Hundreds of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and occupied the building for hours, ransacking offices, forcing an evacuation of lawmakers and interrupting their certification of the November 2020 presidential election. One woman in the mob was shot to death by police in a corridor, and one of several police officers injured in clashes with protesters died. Three more died of medical emergencies on the grounds during the tumult. (Image: Reuters)