This Day In History

March 30th 1981: Reagan assassination attempt

On this day in 1981 at 2.27pm John Hinckley Jr. shot the President of the United States Ronald Reagan in the chest outside a hotel in Washington DC. The President was leaving the Washington Hilton after giving a speech when he and three others were shot by the gunman. Hinckley’s motivation was to impress the young actress Jodie Foster having seen her in the film ‘Taxi Driver’. When he opened fire on the day, he injured White House Press Secretary James Brady (who would later become an advocate of gun control and lend his name to the Brady Bill), police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy who had spread himself over Reagan to take the bullet. Hinckley was apprehended and eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity and remains in a psychiatric facility. Reagan suffered a punctured lung and, despite coming very close to death, made a speedy recovery at the George Washington University Hospital. In the operating room, Reagan joked “I hope you are all Republicans”, to which the lead surgeon replied “Today, Mr President, we are all Republicans”. When the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, arrived Reagan remarked to her:

“Honey, I forgot to duck”

January 28th 1986: Challenger Disaster

On this day in 1986, the US space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its 10th flight, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members. The craft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean due to technical malfunction. The crew compartment and various fragments were recovered from the ocean floor, and several of the crew are known to have survived the initial breakup and died upon impact with the ocean surface. The tragedy occurred the same day President Ronald Reagan was due to give his annual State of the Union, but he postponed the speech and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster. Reagan quoted the poem ‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee Jr:

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

On this day in 1987, the Democratic-controlled United States Congress issued its own report on the Iran-Contra affair on November 18, 1987. It stated that “If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have.” The congressional report wrote that the president bore “ultimate responsibility” for wrongdoing by his aides, and his administration exhibited “secrecy, deception and disdain for the law.”

The Affair was a political scandal that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Under the Boland Amendment, amidst widespread public opposition in the U.S. and controversies surrounding human rights abuses by the Contras, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress. Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985 who became the public face of the affair.

14 administration officials were indicted for involvement in the scandal, with 11 convictions.