Senator Huey Long was shot in the Louisiana state capitol
building. He died about 30 hours later. Called a demagogue
by critics, the populist leader was a larger-than-life figure
who boasted that he bought legislators “like sacks of
potatoes, shuffled them like a deck of cards.”
He gave himself the nickname “Kingfish,” saying “I’m a
small fish here in Washington. But I’m the Kingfish to the
folks down in Louisiana.”
On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking
hands at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York,
when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached
him and fired two shots into his chest. The president rose slightly
on his toes before collapsing forward, saying “be careful how you
tell my wife.”
The president died on September 14 after his wound became
infected. Caught in the act, Czolgosz was tried, convicted, and
executed by the State of New York seven weeks later on
October 29, 1901.
President McKinley greeting well-wishers at a reception in
the Temple of Music minutes before he was shot.
Leon F. Czolgosz (May 5, 1873 – October 29, 1901)
Site of McKinley murder marked by "x" in lower right.
![timm[6]](https://pdxretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/timm6.jpg "timm[6]")
TIM MAGUIRE
Melvin James Brooks (Kaminsky) is a actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter, and playwright. He’s 98 today.
1974
In Washington, D.C. on June 9, 1893, the interior of ramshackle
Ford’s Theatre collapses, causing the deaths of 22 people.
The building—where President Lincoln was shot on April 14,
1865— houses hundreds of clerks employed by the War
Department’s Records and Pensions Division.
An investigation determined the cause of the tragedy was a pier
that had given way during excavation in the basement for an
electric-light plant.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
A National Historic Site, Ford’s Theatre today.
James Earl Ray (above) an escaped American convict, was arrested
in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African
American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Rev. King was fatally wounded by a
sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-
story room at the Motel Lorraine.
That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the
sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine
Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports,
and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect:
James Earl Ray.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968)
James Earl Ray (1928 – 1998)
Ray died on April 23, 1998, just 19 days after the 30th
Anniversary of King’s Assassination, at the age of 70,
at the Columbia Nashville Memorial Hospital in Madison,
Tennessee from complications related to kidney disease
and liver failure caused by hepatitis C.
