Richard Lawrence was hiding behind a pillar, waiting for Andrew Jackson, the current president of the United States to come out of the Capitol Building. His mission was murder. This man was driven by two facts. The fact that Jackson killed his father, and the fact that he was King Richard III of England. There is not a single grain of truth in either of those facts, but he doesn't care. As Jackson exits the Capitol Building, Richard left out and fired his pistol. Unfortunately, it misfired. But luckily, he had a second pistol. Which also misfired. Jackson proceeded to attack him and beat him senseless with his cane. Because that's the kind of leader we need. So that was the story of Richard Lawrence, a wannabe presidential assassin in the 1800s. He tried his darnedist, but in the end, he just couldn't quite get there. So, after he was cried away from the president, he was arrested and given a trial. Turns out that five minutes into his trial, he was found not guilty on account of the insanity. This was partly due to the fact that he dropped a few knowledge bombs during the proceedings, including, but not limited to, telling the jury that, quote unquote, it is for me, gentlemen, to pass the judgment on you and not you upon me. Which, if you know anything about how the judicial system operates, is not traditionally the role of the accused, but I digress. This next one belongs on a TV show. The plot twist coming up is nothing short of earth's shadowing if I do say so myself. So, back during the Obama presidency, the secret service was really worried about assassination or attempt to get its president. Probably because it was their job. If they even suspected you had any chance to harm the guy, they would haul you into an interrogation room and grill you like a hamburger. Thus was the fate of Kevin Curtis. Here's the story. So, the secret service intercepted an envelope for the president in the mail. Inside the envelope was two things. One was a letter and one was rice in, which is it at the poison. This somewhat disturbed the secret service, as murder attempts are generally found upon. It took them almost no time to track down the person who would sent the letter. An elvis impersonator known as Kevin Curtis. They took him into for interrogation and after seven long hours of questions, they got to the important one. Are you familiar with rice in? To which Kevin responded, I don't like rice. I don't really eat rice. If you all look in my house, you won't find any rice. And at that point, the interrogators began to understand that they may not have the right man. When asked if he had any enemies, Kevin quickly identified a martial arts instructor named Everett Duchy, who he apparently had an online feud with. Turns out, Everett had sent the letter and the rice into Obama, with the hopes of getting Kevin arrested. Duchy got 25 years in a federal prison. There was also an interesting plot against Franklin to Eleanor Roosevelt, where some guy named Walter Harold Best wanted to assassinate him. So, he stalked him for almost two weeks, just waiting for his chance. But, before he could actually shoot him, he got arrested. Was the arrest for trying to kill the president? Nope, it was for J-Walking. He may have been able to continue his plan, but then his own wife called the cops on him. That was the end of the great story arc, known as the life of Walter Harold Best, just a series of unfortunate events for that dude. Most people up to this point have tried to use guns to accomplish their missions. Boring. But what if they tried something revolutionary? What if instead of using a crude weapon such as a pistol, they went the more elegant route of cramming their car full of explosives? And attempting to ram it into another one? Now that would be a plan I could get behind. And what a crazy coincidence, it actually happened. This attempt was made against JFK. About a month after he won the election, the dude named Richard Pahlvick started to stalk him. Just waiting for his opportunity to strike. He would travel from state to state following the president, waiting for the perfect chance. But the whole time he was doing that, he was for some reason sending postcards to some dude back to his hometown. Who knew that Richard hated JFK? He did this at every single state he went to. So eventually, the dude back home realized that, ah, all these postcards are coming from the same place that JFK is traveling to. JFK goes to Oklahoma, Richard sends a postcard from Oklahoma. JFK goes to Florida, Richard sends a postcard from there. So the dude back home reported Richard to the Secret Service. And upon inspection, there was one incriminating detail that they discovered, that detail of course being the car jammed full of dynamite. At that point, you can't do much to deny your intentions. Next, president, if you were born in the pre-Jusson Beaver era, you may have heard about this one. So some dude still assessed now, which is a small plane, and smashed it into the White House garden. Was he aiming for the White House? We don't have a clue. Partly due to the fact that the sitting president wasn't even in the White House at the time. Not the most well thought out of plans, as you can tell. Next up, we got an attempt against Teddy Roosevelt. But before that, we need to go farther back to 1901. When president William McKinley was assassinated. After this assassination, a man named John Schrank said that the ghost of McKinley had visited him in a dream. The ghost told him to avenge his death, and then pointed to a photo of President Roosevelt. And being a patriot who was loyal to this dead president, he did the only rational thing and agreed. So as Roosevelt was exiting a hotel to go give a speech, Schrank took the shot. The president went down and the crowd attacked Schrank. But then Roosevelt got back up. Turns out the bullet had went through his eyeglass case, and a 50-page copy of the speech he was going to give before hitting him. He told the crowd to stop attacking Schrank, and a little while later proceeded to not go to the hospital, but to give the speech with a bullet just hanging out inside of him. That's a legend right there. If you want to see some obscure and pretty weird inventions from history, click the video here. And if you made it to the end, subscribe.