Andrew Jackson
On a misty January day in 1835, Richard Lawrence, an out-of-work house painter who believed he was the 15th-century English king Richard III, walked into the US Capitol Building.
President Andrew Jackson was leaving the funeral of a House representative when the English national confronted him in the East Portico, brandishing a pistol.
He raised the gun at Andrew Jackson and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
"Let me alone! Let me alone!" Jackson yelled at Lawrence, according to Smithsonian magazine. "I know where this came from."
Lawrence discarded the weapon, produced a second pistol, and aimed the new gun at Jackson. It also misfired.
According to legend, Jackson subsequently flew at the man and thrashed him with his cane. Whether or not that's true, Lawrence's assassination attempt was unsuccessful. Smithsonian magazine reported that national anthem lyricist Francis Scott Key prosecuted his trial, where he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Lawrence spent the rest of his life institutionalized.
As Time reported, the chance that both perfectly functional pistols would misfire was about one in 125,000. Jackson's survival may have depended on the dampness in the air that day.
