Jedediah Smith

# Jedediah Smith

## Abstract

Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km) -wide South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Coming from modest family background, Smith traveled to St. Louis and joined William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry 's fur trading company in 1822. Smith led the first documented exploration from the Salt Lake frontier to the Colorado River. From there, Smith's party became the first United States citizens to cross the Mojave Desert into what is now the state of California but which at that time was part of Mexico. On the return journey, Smith and his companions were likewise the first U.S. citizens to explore and cross the Sierra Nevada and the treacherous Great Basin Desert. The following year, Smith and companions were the first U.S. explorers to travel north from California overland to the Oregon Country. Surviving three Native American massacres and one bear mauling, Smith's explorations and documented travels were important resources to later American westward expansion.

In March 1831, while in St. Louis, Smith requested of Secretary of War John H. Eaton a federally-funded exploration of the West, but to no avail. Smith informed Eaton that he was completing a map of the West derived from his own journeys. In May, Smith and his partners launched a planned paramilitary trading party to Santa Fe. On May 27, while searching for water in present-day southwest Kansas, Smith disappeared. It was learned weeks later that he had been killed during an encounter with the Comanche – his body was never recovered.

After his death, Smith and his accomplishments were mostly forgotten by Americans. At the beginning of the 20th century, scholars and historians made efforts to recognize and study his achievements. In 1918, a book by Harrison Clifford Dale was published covering Ashley-Smith's western explorations. In 1935, Smith's summary autobiography was finally listed in a biographical dictionary. Smith's first comprehensive biography by Maurice S. Sullivan was published in 1936. A popular Smith biography by Dale Morgan, published in 1953, established Smith as an authentic national hero. Smith's map of the West in 1831 was used by the U.S. Army, including western explorer John C. Frémont, during the early 1840s.

## Early life

Smith was born in Jericho, now Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York, on January 6, 1799, to Jedediah Smith I, a general store owner from New Hampshire, and Sally Strong, both of whom were descended entirely from families that came to New England from England during the Puritan emigration between 1620 and 1640.Smith received adequate English instruction, learned some Latin, and was taught how to write decently. Around 1810, Smith's father was caught up in a legal issue involving counterfeit currency after which the elder Smith moved his family west to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

At age 13, Smith worked as a clerk on a Lake Erie freighter, where he learned business practices and probably met traders returning from the far west to Montreal. This work gave Smith an ambition for adventurous wilderness trade. According to Dale L. Morgan, Smith's love of nature and adventure came from his mentor, Dr. Titus G. V. Simons, a pioneer medical doctor who was on close terms with the Smith family. Morgan speculated that Simons gave the young Smith a copy of Meriwether Lewis ' and William Clark 's 1814 book of their 1804–1806 expedition to the Pacific, and according to legend Smith carried this journal on all of his travels throughout the American West. Smith provided Clark, who had become superintendent of Indian affairs, much information from his own expeditions to the West. In 1817, the Smith family moved westward to Ohio and settled in Green Township in what is present-day Ashland County.

## Smith joins "Ashley's Hundred"

Coming from a family of modest means, Smith sought to make his own way. He may have left his family in search of a trade or employment a year prior to their settlement in Green Township. In 1822, Smith was living in St. Louis. The same year Smith responded to an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette placed by General William H. Ashley. General Ashley and Major Andrew Henry, veterans of the War of 1812, had established a partnership to engage in the fur trade and were looking for "One Hundred" " Enterprising Young Men " to explore and trap in the Rocky Mountains. Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Clark had granted Ashley and Henry license to trade with Native Americans in the upper Missouri River, and he actively encouraged them to compete with the powerful British fur trade in the Pacific Northwest. Smith, a 6-foot-tall, 23-year-old with a commanding presence, impressed General Ashley to hire him. In late spring, Smith started up the Missouri on the keelboat Enterprize, which sank three weeks into the journey. Smith and the other men waited at the site of the wreck for a replacement boat, hunting and foraging for food. Ashley brought up another boat with an additional 46 men and upon proceeding upriver, Smith got his first glimpse of the western frontier, coming into contact with the Sioux and Arikara. On October 1, Smith reached Fort Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, which had just been built by Major Henry and the men that he had led up earlier. Smith and some other men continued up Missouri River to the mouth of the Musselshell River, where they built a camp from which to trap through the winter.

## Arikaras attack

In the spring of 1823, Major Henry ordered Smith back down the Missouri River to the Grand River with a message for Ashley to buy horses from the Arikaras, who, because of a recent skirmish with Missouri Fur Company men, were antagonistic to the white traders. Ashley, who was bringing supplies as well as 70 new men upriver by boat, met Smith at the Arikara village on May 30. They negotiated a trade for several horses and 200 buffalo robes and planned to leave as soon as possible to avert trouble, but weather delayed them. Before they could depart, an incident provoked an Arikara attack. Forty Ashley men, including Smith, were caught in a vulnerable position, and 12 were killed in the ensuing battle. Smith's conduct during the defense was the foundation of his reputation: "When his party was in danger, Mr. Smith was always among the foremost to meet it, and the last to fly; those who saw him on shore, at the Riccaree fight, in 1823, can attest to the truth of this assertion."

Smith and another man were selected by Ashley to return to Fort Henry on foot to inform Henry of the defeat. Ashley and the rest of the surviving party rode back down the river, ultimately enlisting aid from Colonel Henry Leavenworth who was the commander of Fort Atkinson. In August, Leavenworth sent 250 military men along with 80 Ashley-Henry men, 60 men of the Missouri Fur Company and a number of Lakota Sioux warriors to subdue the Arikaras. After a botched campaign, a peace treaty was negotiated. Smith had been appointed commander of one of the two squads of the Ashley-Henry men and was thereafter known as "Captain Smith".

## First expedition, grizzly bear attack, and South Pass

After the campaign, in the fall of 1823, Smith and several other of Ashley's men traveled downriver to Fort Kiowa. Leaving Fort Kiowa in September, Smith and 10 to 16 men headed west, beginning his first far-western expedition, to make their way overland to the Rocky Mountains. Smith and his party were the first Euro-Americans to explore the southern Black Hills, in present-day South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. While looking for the Crow tribe to obtain fresh horses and get westward directions, Smith was attacked by a large grizzly bear. Smith was tackled to the ground by the grizzly, breaking his ribs. Members of his party witnessed him fight the bear, which ripped open his side with its claws and took his head in its mouth. When the bear retreated, Smith's men ran to help him. They found his scalp and ear ripped off, but he convinced a friend, Jim Clyman, to sew it loosely back on, giving him directions. The trappers fetched water, bound up his broken ribs, and cleaned his wounds. After recuperating from his injuries, Smith wore his hair long to cover the large scar from his eyebrow to his ear. The only known portrait of Jedediah Smith, painted after his death in 1831, showed the long hair he wore over the side of his head to hide his scars.

The party spent the rest of 1823 wintering in the Wind River Valley. In 1824, Smith sent an expedition to find an expedient route through the Rocky Mountains. Smith was able to retrieve information from Crow natives. When communicating with the Crows, one of Smith's men made a unique map (consisting of buffalo hide and sand), and the Crows were able to show Smith and his men the direction to the South Pass. Smith and his men crossed through this pass from east to west and encountered the Green River near the mouth of the Big Sandy River in what is now Wyoming. The group broke into two parties—one led by Smith and the other by Thomas Fitzpatrick —to trap upstream and downstream on the Green. The two groups met in July on the Sweetwater River, and it was decided that Fitzpatrick and two others would take the furs and the news of the identification of a feasible highway route through the Rockies to Ashley in St. Louis. Scottish-Canadian trapper Robert Stuart, employed by John Jacob Astor 's Pacific Fur Company, had previously discovered the South Pass, in mid-October 1812, while traveling overland to St. Louis from Fort Astoria, but this information was kept secret. Smith later wrote a letter to Secretary of War John Eaton in 1830 making the location of the South Pass public information. Major Henry returned to St. Louis on August 30, and Ashley began making plans to lead a caravan back to the Rockies to regroup with his men. Henry declined to return with Ashley, instead choosing to retire from the fur trade.

After Fitzpatrick left, Smith and six others, including William Sublette, again crossed South Pass, and in September 1824 encountered a group of Iroquois freemen trappers who had split off from the Hudson's Bay Company Snake Country brigade led by Alexander Ross. Smith told the Iroquois they could get better prices for their furs by selling to American traders and accompanied the brigade back to its base at Flathead Post in Montana. Smith then accompanied the brigade led by Peter Skene Ogden back southeast, leaving Flathead Post in December 1824. In April 1825, on the Bear River in what is now Utah, Smith and his companions split from the brigade and joined a group of Americans that had wintered in the area. In late May 1825, on the Weber River near present Mountain Green, Utah, 23 freemen trappers deserted from Ogden's brigade, backed up by a group of American trappers led by Johnson Gardner. Several of the deserters were among the Iroquois trappers Smith had assisted in September 1824. Smith may have been present at the confrontation, but the extent of his involvement in the desertion of the freemen, if any, is unclear.

## First Rendezvous of 1825

Ashley left St. Louis late in 1824 and after an exploring expedition in Wyoming and Utah, he and Smith were reunited on July 1, 1825, at what would become the first rendezvous. During the rendezvous, Ashley offered Smith a partnership to replace Henry. Smith returned to St. Louis for a time, where he asked Robert Campbell to join the company as a clerk.

## Second Rendezvous of 1826

During the second rendezvous in the summer of 1826, Ashley decided no longer to be directly involved in the business of harvesting furs. Smith left a cache near the rendezvous site at what would become known as Cache Valley in northern Utah, and he and Ashley traveled north to meet David E. Jackson and Sublette at Bear River area near present-day Soda Springs, Idaho. Ashley sold his interest in his and Smith's partnership to the newly created partnership of Smith, Jackson & Sublette but agreed to continue to send supplies to the rendezvous and broker the sale of furs brought to him in St. Louis.

The new partners were immediately faced with the reality that beaver were rapidly disappearing from the region where the two previous partnerships had traditionally trapped. Contemporaneous maps promised untrapped rivers to the west, such as the non-existent Buenaventura. The legendary Buenaventura was thought to be a navigable waterway to the Pacific Ocean possibly providing an alternative to packing loads of furs back to St. Louis. The previous spring, Smith had searched for rivers flowing to the Pacific west and northwest of the Great Salt Lake. Although he pushed into eastern Nevada, he failed to find the Humboldt River, the probable source of the legend of the Buenaventura. Having determined the Buenaventura must lie further south, Smith made plans for an exploratory expedition deep into the Mexican territory of Alta California.

### First trip to California, 1826–27

Smith and his party of 15 left the Bear River on August 7, 1826, and after retrieving the cache he had left earlier, they headed south through present-day Utah and Nevada to the Colorado River, finding increasingly harsh conditions and difficult travel. Finding shelter in a friendly Mojave village near present-day Needles, California, the men and horses recuperated. Smith hired two refugees from the Spanish missions in California to guide them west. After leaving the river and heading into the Mojave Desert, the guides led them through the desert via the Mohave Trail that would become the western portion of the Old Spanish Trail. Upon reaching the San Bernardino Valley of California, Smith and Abraham LaPlant borrowed horses from a rancher and rode to the San Gabriel Mission on November 27, 1826, to present themselves to its director, Father José Bernardo Sánchez, who received them warmly.

The next day, the rest of Smith's men arrived at the mission, and that night the head of the garrison at the mission confiscated all their guns. On December 8, Smith was summoned to San Diego for an interview with Governor José María Echeandía about his party's status in the country. Echeandía, surprised and suspicious of the Americans' unauthorized entrance into California, had Smith arrested, believing him to be a spy. Accompanied by LaPlant, Smith's Spanish interpreter, Smith was taken to San Diego while the remainder of the party remained at the mission. Echeandía detained Smith for about two weeks, demanding that he turn over his journal and maps. Smith requested permission to travel north to the Columbia River on a coastal route, where known paths could take his party back to United States territory. Upon intercession of American sea Captain W.H. Cunningham of Boston on the ship Courier, Smith was released by Echeandía to reunite with his men. Echeandía ordered Smith and his party to leave California by the same route they entered, forbidding him to travel north along the coast to Bodega Bay but giving Smith permission to purchase needed supplies for an eastern overland return journey. Smith boarded the Courier sailing from San Diego to San Pedro, to meet his men.

After waiting for almost another month for an exit visa and then spending at least two more weeks breaking the horses they had purchased for the return trip, Smith's party departed the mission communities of California in mid-February 1827. The party returned on the path it had arrived, but once outside the Mexican settlements, Smith convinced himself he had complied with Echeandía's order to leave by the same route he had entered, and the party veered north crossing over into the Central Valley. The party ultimately made its way to the Kings River on February 28 and began trapping beaver. The party kept working its way north, encountering hostile Maidus. By early May 1827, Smith and his men had traveled 350 miles (560 km) north looking for the Buenaventura River, but they found no break in the Sierra Nevada range through which it could have flowed from the Rocky Mountains. On December 16, 1826, Smith had written in a letter to the United States ambassador plenipotentiary to Mexico his plans to "follow up on of the largest Riv(ers) that emptied into the (San Francisco) Bay cross the mon (mountains) at its head and from thence to our deposit on the Great Salt Lake" and appeared to be following that plan. They followed the Cosumnes River (the northernmost tributary of the San Joaquin River) upstream, but veered off it to the north and crossed over to the American River, a tributary of the Sacramento that flowed into San Francisco Bay. They tried traveling up the canyon of the South Fork of the American to cross the Sierra Nevada but had to return because of deep snow. Unable to find a feasible path for the well-laden party to cross and faced with hostile indigenes, he was forced into a decision: since they did not have time to travel north to Columbia River and be on time for the 1827 rendezvous, they would backtrack to the Stanislaus River and re-establish a camp there. Smith would take two men and some extra horses to get to the rendezvous as quickly as he could and return to his party with more men later in the year, and the group would continue on to the Columbia.

After a difficult crossing of the Sierra Nevada near Ebbetts Pass, Smith and his two men passed around the south end of Walker Lake. After meeting with the only mounted natives that they would encounter until they reached the Salt Lake Valley, they continued east across central Nevada, straight across the Great Basin Desert as the summer heat hit the region. Neither they nor their horses or mules could find adequate food. As the horses gave out, they were butchered for whatever meat the men could salvage. After two days without water, Robert Evans collapsed near the Nevada–Utah border and could go no further, but some natives Smith encountered gave them some food and told him where to find water, which he took back to Evans and revived him. As the three approached the Great Salt Lake, they again were unable to find water, and Evans collapsed again. Smith and Silas Gobel found a spring and again took back water to Evans. Finally, the men came to the top of a ridge from which they saw the Great Salt Lake to the north, a "joyful sight" to Smith. By this time they had one horse and one mule remaining. They reached and crossed the Jordan River. Local natives told him the whites were gathered farther north at "the Little Lake" (Bear Lake on the border between present-day Utah and Idaho). Smith borrowed a fresh horse from them and rode ahead of the other two men, reaching the rendezvous on July 3. The mountain men celebrated Smith's arrival with a cannon salute, for they had given up him and his party for lost.

## Third Rendezvous of 1827 and second trip to California, 1827–28

As agreed, Ashley had sent provisions for the rendezvous, and his men took back 7,400 pounds (3,400 kg) of Smith, Jackson & Sublette furs and a letter from Smith to William Clark, then in the office of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the region west of the Mississippi River, describing what he had observed the previous year. Smith left to rejoin the men he had left in California almost immediately after the rendezvous. He was accompanied by 18 men and two French-Canadian women, following much of the same route as the previous year. In the ensuing year, the Mojave along the Colorado River who had been so welcoming the previous year had clashed with trappers from Taos and were set on revenge against the whites. While crossing the river, Smith's party was attacked; 10 men, including Silas Gobel, were killed, and the two women were taken captive. Smith and the eight surviving men, one badly wounded from the fighting, prepared to make a desperate stand on the west bank of Colorado River, having made a makeshift breastwork out of trees and fashioned lances by attaching butcher knives to light poles. The men still had five guns among them, and as the Mojave began to approach, Smith ordered his men to fire on those within range. Two Mojaves were shot and killed, one was wounded, and the remaining attackers fled. Before the Mojave could regroup, Smith and eight other surviving men retreated on foot across the Mojave Desert on the Mohave Trail to the San Bernardino Valley.

Smith and the other survivors were again well received in San Gabriel. The party moved north to meet with the group that had been left in the San Joaquin Valley, reuniting with them on September 19, 1827. Unlike in San Gabriel, they were coolly received by the priests at Mission San José, who had already received warning of Smith's renewed presence in the area. Smith's party also visited the settlements at Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Governor Echeandía, who was at the time in Monterey (capital of Alta California), once again arrested Smith, this time along with his men. Yet despite the breach of trust, the governor once again released Smith after several English-speaking residents vouched for him, including John B. R. Cooper and William Edward Petty Hartnell in Monterey. After posting a $30,000 bond, Smith received a passport, on the same promise – to leave the province immediately and not to return. Also as before, Smith and his party remained in California hunting in the Sacramento Valley for several months. Upon reaching the northern edge of the valley, the party scouted the route to the northeast afforded by the Pit River but determined it to be impassable, so veered northwest toward the Pacific coast to find the Columbia River and return to the Rocky Mountain region. Jedediah Smith became the first explorer to reach the Oregon Country overland by traveling north on the California coast.

### Trip to the Oregon Country

When Smith's party left Mexican Alta California and entered the Oregon Country, the Treaty of 1818 allowed joint occupation between Britain and the United States. In the Oregon Country, Smith's party, then numbering 19 and over 250 horses, came into contact with the Umpqua people. The tribes along the coast had monitored the party's progress, passing news of conflicts between the group and indigenes, and the Umpqua were wary. One of them stole an ax, and Smith's party treated some of the Umpqua very harshly to force the thief to return it. On July 14, 1828, while Smith, John Turner and Richard Leland were scouting a trail north, his group was attacked in its camp on the Umpqua River.

On the night of August 8, 1828, Arthur Black arrived at the gate of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) post at Fort Vancouver, exhausted and almost destitute of clothing. He believed himself to be the only survivor of the men at camp but did not know of the fate of Smith and the two others. Chief Factor John McLoughlin, superintendent at the fort, sent word to the local tribes that they would be rewarded if they brought Smith and his men to the fort unharmed, and began organizing a search party for them. Smith and the two others, having been alerted to the attack, had climbed a hill above the camp and witnessed the massacre; they arrived at Fort Vancouver on August 10, two days after Black.

McLoughlin sent Alexander McLeod south with Smith, Black, Turner, and Leland, and 37 HBC men to rescue any other men that had been in the camp that had possibly survived, and their goods. After recovering several horses in bad condition, Black and Leland remained with some HBC men to care for them, and the HBC horses and Smith, Turner, and 18 HBC men proceeded to the massacre site. On October 28, they reached it and found 11 decomposed bodies, which they buried. They ultimately confirmed that all 4 of the unaccounted-for men had died and recovered 700 beaver pelts, 50 river otter pelts, 4 sea otter pelts, and 39 horses, as well as Harrison Rogers' journals.

On October 25, 1828, while McLeod's recovery expedition was in the field, HBC Governor George Simpson coincidentally arrived at Fort Vancouver on an inspection tour. When Smith returned, he and Simpson negotiated the purchase of the recovered property by the HBC. Simpson estimated that the recovery expedition had cost the Company £1,000 in lost revenue, and the salaries of the HBC men who spent three months on the trip cost an additional £171, yet HBC turned the recovered property over to Smith at no charge. Then Simpson paid Smith generous prices for the recovered furs and horses, totaling £582, and added a lump-sum bonus of £400; the payment totaled £982. In return, Smith apparently agreed that the firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette would confine its operations to the region east of the Great Divide. Smith remained at Fort Vancouver until March 12, 1829, when he and Arthur Black traveled up the Columbia River with the HBC's York Factory Express to Fort Colvile, where they acquired horses and supplies for the trip east to meet up with his partners in Pierre's Hole, on the west side of the Grand Tetons.

### Blackfeet expedition, 1829–30

In 1829, Captain Smith personally organized a fur trade expedition into the Blackfeet territory. Smith was able to capture a good quantity of beaver pelts before being repulsed by hostile Blackfeet. Jim Bridger served as a riverboat pilot on the Powder River during the profitable expedition. In the four years of western fur trapping, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette were able to make a substantial profit and, at the 1830 rendezvous on the Wind River, they sold their company to Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and John Baptiste Gervais who renamed it the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

### Return to St. Louis

After Smith's return to St. Louis in 1830, he and his partners wrote a letter on October 29 to Secretary of War Eaton, who at the time was involved in a notorious Washington cabinet scandal known as the Petticoat Affair and informed Eaton of the "military implications" of the British allegedly alienating the indigene population towards any American trappers in the Pacific Northwest. According to biographer Dale L. Morgan, Smith's letter was "a clear sighted statement of the national interest". The letter also included a description of Fort Vancouver and described how the British were in the process of making a new fort at the time of Smith's visit in 1829. Smith believed the British were attempting to establish a permanent settlement in the Oregon Country.

Smith had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio. After making a sizable profit from the sale of furs, over $17,000 (more than $ 486,413 in 2023) Smith sent $1,500 (equivalent to $42,919 in 2023) to his family in Green Township, whereupon his brother Ralph bought a farm. Smith also bought a house on First Avenue in St. Louis to be shared with his brothers. Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St. Louis.

The partners' busy schedules in St. Louis also found them and Samuel Parkman making a map of their discoveries in the West, to which Smith was the major contributor. On March 2, 1831, Smith wrote another letter to Eaton, now a few months away from resigning because of the Petticoat Affair, referencing the map and requesting to launch a federally funded exploration expedition similar to the Lewis & Clark expedition. Smith requested that Reuben Holmes, a West Point graduate and military officer, would lead the expedition.

Smith and his partners were also preparing to join into the supply trade known as the " commerce of the prairies". At the request of William H. Ashley, Smith Jackson and Sublette received a passport from Senator Thomas Hart Benton on March 3, 1831, the day after Smith wrote his letter to Eaton, and they began forming a company of 74 men, twenty-two wagons, and a "six-pounder" artillery cannon for protection.

## Death

Having no response from Eaton, Smith joined his partners and left St. Louis to trade in Santa Fe on April 10, 1831. Smith was leading the caravan on the Santa Fe Trail on May 27, 1831, when he left the group to scout for water near the Lower Spring on the Cimarron River in present-day southwest Kansas. He never returned to the group. The remainder of the party proceeded on to Santa Fe hoping Smith would rendezvous with them, but he never did. They arrived in Santa Fe on July 4, 1831, and shortly thereafter members of the party discovered a comanchero with some of Smith's personal belongings. It was relayed that Smith had encountered and communicated with a group of Comancheros just prior to his approaching a group of Comanche. Smith tried to negotiate with the Comanche, but they surrounded him in preparation for an attack.

Most likely, the death of Jedediah Smith occurred in Northern Mexico Territory, south of present-day Ulysses, Grant County, Kansas at Wagon Bed Spring. None of his colleagues were witness to his death and the following accounts are conjectural or imagined, although possibly based on hearsay and third-hand information. According to Smith's grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Smith, there were 20 Comanches in the group. Smith attempted to conciliate with them until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the left shoulder with an arrow. Smith fought back, ultimately killing the chief of the warriors. The version written by Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, in a letter to their brother Ira four months after Jedediah's death says that Jedediah had killed the "head Chief," but nothing about any other Comanche being wounded or killed. Josiah Gregg wrote in 1844 that Smith "struggled bravely to the last; and, as the Indians themselves have since related, killed two or three of their party before he was overpowered." Ezra Delos Smith stated that his grand-uncle had fought so valiantly that the Comanche believed "he had been more than mortal, and that he could be immortal it would be better to propitiate his spirit; so they did not mutilate his body, but later gave it the same funeral rites they gave its chief" Austin Smith, who along with another Smith brother, Peter, was a member of the caravan, was able to retrieve Jedediah Smith's rifle and pistols that the Indians had taken and traded to the Comancheros.

## Aftermath

In the aftermath of Smith's death, President Andrew Jackson, during his second term in 1836, launched the federally-funded oceanic United States Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, from 1838 to 1842. One of the expedition's accomplishments was the exploration of the Pacific Northwest and to lay claim on the Oregon Country, which Smith had previously explored, dominated by the British Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. The federally-funded overland exploration of the West that Smith had requested in 1831 took place starting in 1842 commanded by Lieutenant John C. Frémont under President John Tyler and President James K. Polk. It was Frémont's first two documented and published explorations of the West during the 1840s that opened the West to American expansion. Frémont was popularly known as the Pathfinder until the late 19th century, while Smith's life and reputation were nearly forgotten by his countrymen. In 1846, the disputed joint occupancy of Britain and the United States of the Oregon Country where Smith stayed at Fort Vancouver was ended by the Oregon Treaty. In 1848, Mexico ceded California (where Smith had twice been arrested by Governor Echeandía) to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican–American War.

## Personal characteristics and beliefs

Jedediah Smith had a dry, not raucous, sense of humor and was not known to use the profanity common to his peers. Smith's immediate family were practicing Christians; his younger brother Benjamin was named after a Methodist circuit preacher, and his letters indicate his own Christian beliefs. Barton H. Barbour asserted in 2009 that the legend of Smith as a "Bible-toter" and a missionary grew only after his death, and that assertions that he carried a Bible with him in the wilderness have no basis in any accounts by him or his companions. Further, that the only documentation of any public demonstration of faith was a prayer said at the burial of one of the Arikara massacre victims. However, the 2023 biography, Throne of Grace, indicates Smith to be deeply religious. While he rarely attended church, "it was said of him he made the mountaintop his confessional, the forest glade his altar." As such, author Tom Clavin describes Smith's life as a kind of parable illustrate God’s munificence to any man willing to keep the Christian faith through the many trials. All accounts of Smith describe him as strongly self-controlled, never drinking alcohol to excess or bedding Native American women, indicating he had the discipline often associated with a strict moral code. He owned at least two slaves, which conflicted with his northern Methodist upbringing, and his behavior was not always honorable when dealing with those he considered his antagonists. He was known to be physically strong, cool under pressure, extremely skilled at surviving in the wild, and possessed extraordinary leadership skills. Smith's true character is an enigma open to interpretation.

### Views of Native Americans

While traveling throughout the American West, Smith's policy with the Native Americans was to maintain friendly relations with gifts and exchanges, learning from their cultures. As he traveled through northern California for the first time, then part of Mexican territory Alta California, he tried to maintain that policy, but the situation quickly deteriorated. The Maidu were fearful and defensive, and Smith's men killed at least seven of them upon his orders when they refused peaceful advances and demonstrated aggressive behaviors. He later wrote that they were "the lowest intermediate link between man and the Brute creation". Later, during his trek across the Great Basin, he said of the desert indigenes he came upon "children of nature...unintelligent type of beings...They form a connecting link between the animal and intellectual creation..." Upon returning to Mexican California, even after suffering the Mojave massacre, he continued to try to maintain good relations, punishing two of his men, albeit lightly, who had unnecessarily killed one native and wounded another. But as the party continued north, the natives continued the aggressive actions, and Smith's men wounded at least two more and three were killed. By the time the party reached the Umpqua River in the British-American shared Oregon Country, their tolerance was at an ebb, leading to the ax incident and resulting in disastrous consequences.

## Historical reputation

Smith for the most part was forgotten by his countrymen as a historical figure for over 75 years after his death. In 1853, Peter Skene Ogden had written about the Umpqua massacre in Traits of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader, and the Oregon Pioneers Association and Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote versions of it in 1876 and 1886, respectively. There are mentions of him in memoirs by other fur trappers, and mentions by George Gibbs and F. V. Hayden in their reports. Recollection of a Septuagenarian by William Waldo, published by the Missouri Historical Society in 1880, discussed Smith, focusing on hearsay evidence of his piety. There was no mention of Smith in the 1891 volume 5 publication of Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. The first known publication solely about Smith was in the 1896 Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California. In 1902, Hiram M. Chittenden wrote of him extensively in The American Fur Trade of the West The same year Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh wrote about Smith's exploits with the Mojave Indians in his book The Romance of the Colorado River: The Story of Its Discovery in 1540 with an Account of Later Explorations. Smith, however, again was not listed in the 1906 volume 9 publication of American Biographical Society's Biographical Dictionary of America, edited by Rossiter Johnson. In 1908, John G. Neihardt and Doane Robinson lamented the obscurity of Smith; afterward, more extensive efforts were initiated to publicize his accomplishments.

In 1912, an article about Smith written by a grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Smith of Meade, Kansas, was published by the Kansas Historical Society. Five years later, Smith's status as a historical figure was further revived by Harrison Clifford Dale's book, The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829: With the Original Journals, published in 1918. During the 1920s, Maurice S. Sullivan traced descendants of Smith's siblings and found two portions of the narrative of Smith's travels, written in the hand of Samuel Parkman who had been hired to assist in compiling the document after Smith's return to St. Louis in 1830. The narrative's impending publication had been announced in a St. Louis newspaper as late as 1840, but never happened. In 1934, Sullivan published the remnants, documenting Smith's travels in 1821 and 1822 and from June 1827 until the Umpqua massacre a year later, in The Travels of Jedediah Smith, giving a new documented perspective of Smith's explorations. Along with the narrative, Sullivan published the portion of Alexander McLeod's journal documenting the search for any surviving members of Smith's party and the recovery of his property after the Umpquah massacre. The Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 17, edited by Dumas Malone, published in 1935, contains an article on Smith authored by Joseph Schafer. The next year, the first comprehensive biography of Smith: Jedediah Smith: Trader and Trail Breaker by Sullivan was posthumously published, but it was Dale Morgan's book, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West, published in 1953, that established Smith as an authentic American hero whose explorations were overshadowed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

According to Maurice S. Sullivan, Smith was "the first white man to cross the future state of Nevada, the first to conquer the High Sierra of California, and the first to explore the entire Pacific Slope from Lower California to the banks of the Columbia River". He was known for his many systematic recorded observations on nature and topography. His expeditions also raised doubts about the existence of the legendary Buenaventura River. Jedediah Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific West maps. He and his partners, Jackson and Sublette, produced a map that, in a eulogy for Smith printed in the Illinois Monthly Magazine for June 1832, the unknown author claimed: "This map is now probably the best extant, of the Rocky Mountains, and the country on both sides, from the States to the Pacific." This map has been called "a landmark in mapping of the American West" The original map is lost, its content was overlaid and annotated by George Gibbs on an 1845 base map by John C. Frémont, which is on file at the American Geographical Society Library, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

## Author of journal

Another important piece of the Jedediah Smith story was discovered in 1967, when another portion of the 1830–31 narrative (again in Parkman's hand) was found amongst other historical papers in an attic in St. Louis. This portion documented Smith's first California trip (1826–27), and immediately preceded the portion of the narrative found by Sullivan 35 years earlier. George R. Brooks edited and introduced the narrative portion, along with the first "journal" of Smith companion Harrison Rogers, in 1977.

## Legacy

### Geographic namesakes

Smith's exploration of northwestern California and southern Oregon resulted in two rivers, the Smith River (California) and Smith River (Oregon) being named for him. Smith's Fork of the Bear River, in southwest Wyoming, is named for him. and Smith's Fork of Blacks Fork of the Green River may also be named for him. The Jedediah Smith Wilderness in Wyoming bears his name.

### Honorary commemorations

- Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Jedediah Smith Campground in California

- Jedediah Smith Visitor Center located in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

- Smith River, along with the North Fork Smith River, Middle Fork Smith River and South Fork Smith River, flows from the Klamath Mountains to the Pacific Ocean through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in Del Norte County, California

- Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail, a 32 mile long trail between Sacramento and Folsom, California

- Jedediah Smith Wilderness, 123,451 acres (499.59 km2) within Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Teton County, Wyoming

- Dodge City Trail of Fame, inductee

- Jedediah Strong Smith's Route 1823, historic monument in South Dakota

- California Outdoors Hall of Fame, 2006 inductee

- Jedediah Smith Muzzleloaders Gun Club

- Jedediah Smith Road, Temecula, California

- Hall of Great Westerners, 1964 inductee, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

- Jed Smith Ultra Classic marathon, Sacramento, California

- Jedediah Smith Memorial, San Dimas, California

- Jedediah Smith Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Apple Valley, California

- Jedediah Smith historic trails

- Jedediah Smith Society, founded in 1957 to preserve the history of Jedediah Smith

- Museum of the Mountain Man

### In popular culture

- Jedediah Smith – Frontier Legend (documentary)

- In 2005, Steven Spielberg produced the mini-series, Into the West, where American actor Josh Brolin portrays Jedediah Smith, and the dramatized grizzly bear mauling shows the graphic hanging and sewing back on of the lacerated scalp of Smith.

- Taming the Wild West: The Legend of Jedediah Smith (2005) Reenactment Documentary; Smith is portrayed by Sean Galuszka; directed by Diana Zaslaw

- Mentioned in the 1984 movie Red Dawn; the main character played by Patrick Swayze was named Jed, and the character says he was named after Smith.

- Jedediah Smith is featured in the documentary "America's Westward Expansion"

- Jedediah Smith – Old West Legend (Wild West Frontier History Documentary)

- Jedediah Smith – Into the West (documentary)

- Jedediah Smith – Story of Us (documentary)

- Jedediah Strong Smith – Path Through History (documentary)

- Legacy of the Mountain Men, documentary

## Works cited


Dejan Čurović

# Dejan Čurović

## Abstract

Dejan Čurović (Serbian Cyrillic: Дејан Чуровић, pronounced; 10 August 1968 – 11 August 2019) was a Serbian footballer who played as a striker.

A powerful forward, Čurović played with four clubs during his career, namely Zemun and Partizan in the former Yugoslavia, as well as Vitesse and Groningen in the Netherlands. He secured legendary status at Vitesse by scoring the last ever goal at the Nieuw Monnikenhuize and the opening goal at the GelreDome.

## Playing career

Čurović started out at his local club Zemun. He was a member of the team that won the Yugoslav Second League in 1990. In his debut season in the Yugoslav First League, Čurović scored 11 goals in 27 appearances, as the club finished in 13th place.

In the summer of 1993, Čurović was transferred to Partizan. He quickly formed a prolific striking partnership with Savo Milošević and finished the 1993–94 season as the team's second-highest scorer with 27 goals, helping the Crno-beli win the double.

After a successful year at Partizan, Čurović moved abroad and signed with Dutch club Vitesse. He spent six seasons in Arnhem, scoring 47 goals across all competitions. In the summer of 2000, Čurović switched to fellow Eredivisie side Groningen. He spent three years at the club, before retiring from the game.

## Post-playing career

In June 2011, Čurović was appointed as sporting director of Serbian First League club Inđija.

## Death

Čurović died from leukemia on 11 August 2019, one day after his 51st birthday.

## Honours

Zemun

- Yugoslav Second League: 1989–90

Partizan

- First League of FR Yugoslavia: 1993–94

- FR Yugoslavia Cup: 1993–94


# List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots

## Abstract

Assassination attempts and plots on the President of the United States have been numerous, ranging from the early 19th century to the present day. This article lists assassinations and assassination attempts on incumbent and former presidents and presidents-elect, but not on those who had not yet been elected president.

On January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson was the first president to experience an assassination attempt when Richard Lawrence twice tried to shoot him in the East Portico of the Capitol after Jackson left a funeral held in the House of Representatives Chamber. The attempt failed when both of Lawrence's pistols misfired.

Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.) is the only U.S. president to have been injured in an assassination attempt while in office and survive. Two former presidents, Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Donald Trump (2024, by Thomas Matthew Crooks) have also been injured in attacks.

In all of these cases, the attacker's weapon was a firearm, and all the subjects were male. Gerald Ford experienced two attempted assassinations with a woman as the assailant.

Many assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were motivated by a desire to change the policy of the American government. Not all such attacks, however, had political reasons. Many other attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane. Historian James W. Clarke suggests that most assassination attempters have been sane and politically motivated, whereas the Department of Justice 's legal manual claims that a large majority has been insane. Some assassins, especially mentally ill ones, acted solely on their own, whereas those pursuing political agendas have more often found supporting conspirators. Most assassination plotters were arrested and punished by execution or lengthy detainment in a prison or insane asylum.

The fact that the successor of a removed president is the vice president, and all vice presidents since Andrew Johnson have shared the president's political party affiliation, may discourage such attacks, at least for policy reasons, even in times of partisan strife. The third person in line, the Speaker of the House, as outlined in the Presidential Succession Act, is often of the opposing party, however.

Threats of violence against the president are often made for rhetorical or humorous effect without serious intent, while credibly threatening the president of the United States has been a federal felony since 1917.

## Presidents assassinated

### Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was the first U.S. president to be assassinated (though not the first to die in office). The assassination took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., at about 10:15 PM. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a well-known actor and a Confederate sympathizer from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate Army, he had contacts within the Confederate Secret Service. In 1864, Booth formulated a plan (very similar to one of Thomas N. Conrad previously authorized by the Confederacy) to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners. After attending an April 11, 1865, speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for Black people, Booth decided to assassinate the president instead. Learning that the president would be attending Ford's Theatre, Booth formulated a plan with co-conspirators to assassinate Lincoln at the theater, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward at their homes. Lincoln attended the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. As the president sat in his state box in the balcony watching the play with his wife Mary and two guests, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris, Booth entered from behind. He aimed a.44-caliber Derringer pistol at the back of Lincoln's head and fired, mortally wounding him. Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. An unconscious Lincoln was examined by doctors and taken across the street to the Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 AM on April 15.

As he died, his breathing grew quieter, his face more calm. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Historians, particularly author Lee Davis, have emphasized Lincoln's peaceful appearance when and after he died: "It was the first time in four years, probably, that a peaceful expression crossed his face." Field wrote in a letter to The New York Times: "there was 'no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat... a mere cessation of breathing'... I had never seen upon the President's face an expression more genial and pleasing." The president's secretary, John Hay, saw "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features".

Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson's would-be attacker did not follow through. After being on the run for 12 days, Booth was tracked down and found on April 26, 1865, by Union Army soldiers at a farm in Virginia, some 70 miles (110 km) south of Washington. After refusing to surrender, Booth was fatally shot by Union cavalryman Boston Corbett. Four other conspirators were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy.

### James A. Garfield

The assassination of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, began at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., at 9:20 AM on Saturday, July 2, 1881, less than four months after he took office. As the president was arriving at the train station, writer and lawyer Charles J. Guiteau shot him twice with a.442 Webley British Bull Dog revolver; one bullet grazed the president's shoulder, and the other pierced his back. For the next eleven weeks, Garfield endured the pain and suffering from having been shot, before dying on September 19, 1881, at 10:35 PM, of complications caused by iatrogenic infections, which were contracted by the doctors' relentless probing of his wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. He had survived for a total of 79 days after being shot.

Guiteau was immediately arrested. After a highly publicized trial lasting from November 14, 1881, to January 25, 1882, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. A subsequent appeal was rejected, and he was executed by hanging on June 30, 1882, in the District of Columbia, two days before the first anniversary of the shooting. Guiteau was assessed during his trial and autopsy as mentally unbalanced or suffering from the effects of neurosyphilis. He claimed to have shot Garfield out of disappointment at being passed over for appointment as Ambassador to France. He attributed the president's victory in the election to a speech he wrote in support of Garfield.

### William McKinley

The assassination of United States president William McKinley took place at 4:07 PM on Friday, September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. McKinley, attending the Pan-American Exposition, was shot twice in the abdomen at close range by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, who was armed with a.32-caliber Iver Johnson "Safety Automatic" revolver that was concealed underneath a handkerchief. The first bullet ricocheted off either a button or an award medal on McKinley's jacket and lodged in his sleeve; the second shot pierced his stomach. Although McKinley initially appeared to be recovering, his condition rapidly declined due to gangrene setting in around his wounds and he died on September 14, 1901, at 2:15 AM.

Members of the crowd, started by James Benjamin Parker, subdued and captured Czolgosz. Afterward, the 4th Brigade, National Guard Signal Corps, and police intervened, beating Czolgosz so severely it was initially thought he might not live to stand trial. On September 24, after a two-day trial, in which the defendant refused to defend himself, Czolgosz was convicted and later sentenced to death. He was executed by the electric chair in Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901. Czolgosz's actions were politically motivated, although it remains unclear what outcome, if any, he believed the shooting would yield.

Following President McKinley's assassination, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the president of the United States as part of its mandate.

### John F. Kennedy

The assassination of United States president John F. Kennedy took place at 12:30 PM on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, during a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine and American defector Lee Harvey Oswald (using a 6.5×52mm Carcano Model 38 rifle) from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He was shot once in the back, the bullet exiting via his throat, and once in the head. Governor Connally was seriously wounded, and bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury from a small piece of curbstone that had fragmented after it was struck by one of the bullets. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM. Oswald was arrested and charged by the Dallas Police Department for the assassination of Kennedy and for the murder of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who was shot dead in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas just hours later. On Sunday, November 24, while being transferred from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Department Headquarters by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, albeit his conviction was later overturned on appeal. In 1967, Ruby died in prison while awaiting a new trial.

In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy and Tippit were both killed by Oswald, that Oswald had acted entirely alone in both murders, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Nonetheless, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80% of Americans surveyed have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up to kill President Kennedy. Conspiracy theories have persisted to the present day.

## Incumbent presidents wounded

### Ronald Reagan

On March 30, 1981, as Ronald Reagan was returning to his limousine after speaking at the Washington Hilton hotel, would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr., fired six gunshots using a.22 caliber Röhm RG-14 revolver toward him, striking Reagan and three others. Reagan was seriously wounded by a bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding. Although "close to death" upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan was stabilized in the emergency room, then underwent emergency exploratory surgery. He recovered and was released from the hospital on April 11. Besides Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded. All three survived, but Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled; Brady's death in 2014 was considered a homicide because it was ultimately caused by this injury.

Hinckley was immediately arrested, and later said he had wanted to kill Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster. He was deemed mentally ill and confined to an institution. Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016, 35 years after the incident and 12 years after Reagan's death from pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease.

## Presidents wounded while not in office

### Theodore Roosevelt

Three-and-a-half years after he left office, Theodore Roosevelt ran in the 1912 presidential election as a member of the Progressive Party. While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, John Schrank, a saloon-keeper from New York who had been stalking him for weeks, shot Roosevelt once in the chest with a.38-caliber Colt Police Positive Special. The 50-page text of his campaign speech titled " Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual ", folded over twice in Roosevelt's breast pocket, and a metal glasses case slowed the bullet, saving his life. Schrank was immediately disarmed, captured, and might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him.

Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 84 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pulmonary pleurae. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, and the bullet remained in Roosevelt's body for the remainder of his life. He spent two weeks recuperating before returning to the campaign trail. Despite his tenacity, Roosevelt ultimately lost his bid for reelection to the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.

At Schrank's trial, the would-be assassin claimed that William McKinley had visited him in a dream and told him to avenge his assassination by killing Roosevelt. He was found legally insane and was institutionalized until his death in 1943.

### Donald Trump

On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump, former president of the United States and the Republican Party's presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election, was shot and wounded in his right ear while addressing a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. Shortly after Trump began addressing the rally, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired 8 rounds with an AR-15–style rifle from the roof of a building located around 400 feet (120 meters) from the stage. Crooks also killed audience member Corey Comperatore and critically injured two other audience members. Crooks was shot and killed by the U.S. Secret Service 's counter-sniper team.

Video of the incident showed Trump clasping his right ear before taking cover on the floor of the podium, where he was shielded by Secret Service personnel. After agents helped him to his feet, Trump emerged with blood on his ear and face. He then either mouthed or shouted the words "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Photojournalist Evan Vucci of the Associated Press captured images of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist in the air, with an American flag in the background, which went viral on social media and were widely praised as iconic and historically significant. Trump was escorted off-stage and taken to a nearby hospital before being released in stable condition a few hours later.

## Other attacks, assassination attempts, and plots

### Andrew Jackson

- January 30, 1835: Just outside the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson with two pistols, both of which misfired. Later somebody tried the two pistols and both worked fine. Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him severely with his cane. Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution until his death in 1861.

### Abraham Lincoln

- February 23, 1861: President-elect Lincoln passed through Baltimore amid threats of the Baltimore Plot, an alleged conspiracy by Confederate sympathizers in Maryland to assassinate Lincoln en route to his inauguration. Allan Pinkerton 's National Detective Agency played a key role in protecting the president-elect by managing Lincoln's security throughout the journey. Although scholars debate whether the threat was real, Lincoln and his advisers took actions to ensure his safe passage through Baltimore.

- August 1864: A lone rifle shot fired by an unknown sniper missed Lincoln's head by inches (passing through his hat) as he rode in the late evening, unguarded, north from the White House three miles (5 km) to the Soldiers' Home (his regular retreat where he would work and sleep before returning to the White House the following morning). Near 11:00 PM, Private John W. Nichols of the Pennsylvania 150th Volunteers, the sentry on duty at the gated entrance to the Soldiers' Home grounds, heard the rifle shot and moments later saw the president riding toward him "bareheaded". Lincoln described the matter to Ward Lamon, his old friend and loyal bodyguard.

- April 11, 1865: John Wilkes Booth, who would make a successful attempt on Lincoln's life three days later, attended Lincoln's final public address in Washington, D.C., with his fellow future conspirators David Herold and Lewis Powell. During the speech, Booth became enraged when Lincoln expressed his support for granting voting rights to former slaves and ordered Powell to shoot Lincoln. Powell ultimately decided against it for fear of the crowd, but Booth vowed to "put him through" and formulated a plan to kill Lincoln which came to fruition on April 14.

### William Howard Taft

- 1909: William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, a historic first meeting between a U.S. president and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president would cross the border into Mexico. Díaz requested the meeting to show U.S. support for his planned eighth run as president, and Taft agreed to support Díaz in order to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico. Both sides agreed that the disputed Chamizal strip connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juárez would be considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit, but the meeting focused attention on this territory and resulted in assassination threats and other serious security concerns. The Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents, and U.S. Marshals were all called in to provide security. An additional 250-member private security detail led by Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was hired by John Hays Hammond. Hammond was a close friend of Taft from Yale University and a former candidate for U.S. vice president in the 1908 presidential election who, along with his business partner Burnham, held considerable mining interests in Mexico. On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered 52-year-old Julius Bergerson holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured and disarmed Bergerson within only a few feet (around one meter) of Taft and Díaz.

- 1910: President Taft visited his aunt, Delia Torrey, in Millbury, Massachusetts. Torrey later reported receiving a stranger who allegedly overheard an assassination plot in Boston, Massachusetts. Before leaving nearby Worcester, Massachusetts by train, he threatened Torrey, who claimed the stranger "did not want anything to get into the papers, and if it did he would come back and kill me." Torrey reported the plot to the local police, who shared the allegation with the Worcester Police and the Secret Service. The man was never identified.

### Herbert Hoover

- November 19, 1928: President-elect Hoover embarked on a ten-nation "goodwill tour" of Central and South America. While crossing the Andes Mountains from Chile, an assassination plot by Argentine anarchists was thwarted. The group was led by Severino Di Giovanni, who planned to blow up his train as it crossed the Argentinian central plain. The plotters had an itinerary but the bomber was arrested before he could place the explosives on the rails. Hoover professed unconcern, tearing off the front page of a newspaper that revealed the plot and explaining, "It's just as well that Lou shouldn't see it," referring to his wife. His complimentary remarks on Argentina were well received in both the host country and in the press.

### Franklin D. Roosevelt

- February 15, 1933: Seventeen days before Roosevelt 's first presidential inauguration, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt in Miami, Florida. Zangara's shots missed the president-elect, but Zangara did mortally wound Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and injured four other people. Zangara pleaded guilty to the murder of Cermak and was executed in the electric chair on March 20, 1933. It has never been conclusively determined who was Zangara's target, but most assumed at first that he had been shooting at the president-elect. Another theory is that the attempt may have been ordered by the imprisoned Al Capone, and that Cermak, who had led a crackdown on the Chicago Outfit and Chicago organized crime more generally, was the true target.

- 1943: Soviet NKVD claimed to have discovered a Nazi German Waffen-SS plan to assassinate Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference.

### Harry S. Truman

- Mid-1947: During the Jewish insurgency in Palestine before the formation of the State of Israel, the Zionist paramilitary organization Lehi was alleged to have sent a number of letter bombs addressed to the president and high-ranking staff at the White House. At the time, the incident was not publicized, but Truman's daughter Margaret Truman disclosed the alleged incident in her biography of Truman published in 1972; the allegation was previously disclosed in a memoir by Ira R. T. Smith, who worked in the mail room. According to Truman, the Secret Service was alerted by British intelligence after similar letters had been sent to high-ranking British officials and Lehi claimed credit; the mail room of the White House intercepted the letters intended for President Truman and the Secret Service defused them.

- November 1, 1950: Two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to kill President Truman at the Blair House, where Truman was living while the White House was undergoing major renovations. In the attack, Torresola injured White House policeman Joseph Downs and mortally wounded White House policeman Leslie Coffelt. Coffelt returned fire, killing Torresola with a shot to the head. Collazo wounded an officer before being shot in the stomach. Collazo survived with serious injuries; Coffelt died of his wounds 4 hours later in a hospital. Truman was not harmed, but he was placed at a huge risk. Collazo was convicted in a federal trial and received the death sentence. Truman commuted Collazo's death sentence to life in prison. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter further commuted Collazo's sentence to time served.

### John F. Kennedy

- December 11, 1960: While vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker driven by hatred of Catholics. Pavlick intended to crash his dynamite -laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy's vehicle, but he changed his mind after seeing Kennedy's wife and daughter bid him goodbye. Pavlick was arrested three days later by the Secret Service after being stopped for a driving violation; police found the dynamite in his car and arrested him. On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was committed to the United States Public Health Service mental hospital in Springfield, Missouri, then was indicted for threatening Kennedy's life seven weeks later. Charges against Pavlick were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Judge Emett Clay Choate ruled that Pavlick was unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions, but kept him in the mental hospital. The federal government also dropped charges in August 1964, and Pavlick was eventually released from the New Hampshire State Hospital on December 13, 1966. He died in 1975 aged 88.

### Richard Nixon

- April 13, 1972: Arthur Bremer carried a firearm to a motorcade in Ottawa, Canada, intending to shoot Nixon, but the president's car went by too fast for Bremer to get a good shot. The next day, Bremer thought he saw Nixon's car outside of the Centre Block, but it had disappeared by the time he could retrieve his gun from his hotel room. A month later, Bremer instead shot and seriously injured the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who was paralyzed from the waist down until his death in 1998. Three other people were wounded. Bremer served 35 years in prison.

- February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House. He hijacked a DC-9 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport after killing a Maryland Aviation Administration police officer, and was told that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. After he shot both pilots (one later died), an officer named Charles 'Butch' Troyer shot Byck through the plane's door window. He survived long enough to kill himself by shooting.

### Gerald Ford

- Mid-August 1974: Muharem Kurbegovic, also known as The Alphabet Bomber, said in a message that he was going to come to Washington, D.C., and throw a nerve gas bomb at President Gerald Ford, then just ten days into his presidency. Within one day, the CIA, the U.S. Secret Service, and other law enforcement agencies, working out of the White House basement, identified Kurbegovich; he was arrested on August 20. The group had identified his Yugoslav origins, using a CIA voice analysis of his tapes, with court records of the cases handled by his first targets—the judge and the police commissioners—triangulating his identity.

- September 5, 1975: On the northern grounds of the California State Capitol, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt M1911.45-caliber pistol on Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. She had four cartridges in the pistol's magazine but none in the firing chamber, and as a result, the gun did not fire. She was quickly restrained by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released from custody on August 14, 2009 (two years and eight months after Ford's death in 2006).

- September 22, 1975: In San Francisco, California, only 17 days after Fromme's attempt, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away. A bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm and the shot missed Ford, striking a building wall and slightly injuring taxi driver John Ludwig. Moore was tried and convicted in federal court, and sentenced to prison for life. She was paroled from a federal prison on December 31, 2007, after serving more than 30 years—one year and five days after Ford's natural death.

The two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford in September 1975 are the only two known cases of women attempting to assassinate an American president.

### Jimmy Carter

- May 5, 1979: Raymond Lee Harvey was an Ohio-born unemployed American drifter. He was arrested by the Secret Service after being found carrying a starter pistol with blank rounds, ten minutes before Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles on May 5, 1979. Harvey had a history of mental illness, but police had to investigate his claim that he was part of a four-man operation to assassinate the president. According to Harvey, he fired seven blank rounds from the starter pistol on the hotel roof on the night of May 4 to test how much noise it would make. He claimed to have been with one of the plotters that night, whom he knew as "Julio". (This man was later identified as a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, who gave the name Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz.) At the time of his arrest, Harvey had eight spent rounds in his pocket, as well as 70 unspent blank rounds for the gun. Harvey was jailed on a $50,000 bond, given his transient status, and Ortiz was alternately reported as being held on a $100,000 bond as a material witness or held on a $50,000 bond being charged with burglary from a car. Charges against the pair were ultimately dismissed for a lack of evidence.

- John Hinckley Jr. came close to shooting Carter during his re-election campaign, but he lost his nerve. He would later attempt to kill President Ronald Reagan in March 1981.

### George H. W. Bush

- April 13, 1993: According to Kuwaiti authorities, and an FBI investigation fourteen Kuwaiti and Iraqi men believed to be working for Saddam Hussein smuggled bombs into Kuwait, planning to assassinate former President Bush by a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait University three months after he had left office in January 1993. The former president was on a visit to Kuwait in 1993 to commemorate the coalition's victory over Iraq in the Persian Gulf War when Kuwaiti officials claimed to have foiled an alleged assassination plot and arrested the suspects. At the time the former president was accompanied by his wife, two of his sons, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, former Chief of Staff John Sununu, and former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. Of the 17 people Kuwaiti authorities arrested, two suspects, Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali and Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, retracted their confessions at the trial, claiming that they were coerced. A Kuwaiti court convicted all but one of the defendants. Then-president Bill Clinton responded by launching a cruise missile attack on an Iraqi intelligence building in the Mansour district of Baghdad. The plot was used as one of the justifications for the Iraq Resolution authorizing the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country. An analysis by the CIA's Counterterrorism Center concludes the assassination plot was likely fabricated by Kuwaiti authorities; however, at the time the FBI established that the plot had been directed by the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), and the CIA had received information suggesting that Saddam Hussein had authorized the assassination attempt to get revenge against the U.S., to punish Kuwait for working with the U.S., and to keep other Arab states for intervening in Iraq any further. The day before the attack, on April 12, 1993, the then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and future 64th U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went before the U.N. Security Council to present evidence of the Iraqi plot with the hope of gaining international support.

### Bill Clinton

- January 21, 1994: Ronald Gene Barbour, a retired military officer and freelance writer, plotted to kill Clinton while the president was jogging. Barbour returned to Florida a week later without having fired the shots at the president, who was on a state visit to Russia. Barbour was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 1998.

- October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a 7.62×39mm Type 56 semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the North Lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was inside). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Found to have a suicide note in his pocket, Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

- November 1994: Osama bin Laden recruited Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to attempt to assassinate Clinton. However, Yousef decided that security would be too effective and decided to target Pope John Paul II instead.

- November 24, 1996: During his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila, Clinton's motorcade was rerouted before it was to drive over a bridge. Secret Service officers had intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent, and Lewis Merletti, the director of the Secret Service, ordered the motorcade to be re-routed. An intelligence team later discovered a bomb under the bridge. Subsequent U.S. investigation "revealed that was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden ".

- October 2018: A package containing a pipe bomb addressed to his wife Hillary Clinton and sent to their home in Chappaqua, New York, was intercepted by the Secret Service. It was one of several mailed to other Democratic leaders in the same week, including former president Barack Obama. Bill Clinton was at the Chappaqua home when the package was intercepted, while Hillary was in Florida campaigning for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Fingerprint DNA revealed that the package was sent by Florida resident Cesar Sayoc, who was captured two days after the package was intercepted. Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Sayoc, but the judge instead sentenced him to 20 years.

### George W. Bush

- May 10, 2005: While President Bush was giving a speech in the Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vladimir Arutyunian threw a live Soviet -made RGD-5 hand grenade toward the podium. The grenade had its pin pulled, but did not explode because a red tartan handkerchief was wrapped tightly around it, preventing the safety lever from detaching. After escaping that day, Arutyunian was arrested in July 2005. During his arrest, he killed an Interior Ministry agent. He was convicted in January 2006 and given a life sentence.

- May 24, 2022: Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, an Iraqi citizen and resident of Columbus, Ohio, was arrested for involvement in a plot to assassinate former President Bush based on information obtained from conversations he held with several undercover FBI informants. He was also accused of committing an immigration crime and planning to illegally smuggle Iraqi nationals into the U.S. from Mexico in order to assist with the plot. He additionally claimed to informants that he had direct connections to members of the former ISIS, including ones to former ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (before his death) and a former ISIS financial chief, the latter of whom he intended to launder money from into the U.S. via a Columbus car dealership. In February, Shihab and an informant traveled to the Bush home in Dallas, Texas and to the George W. Bush Institute to conduct surveillance. Shihab entered the country illegally in September 2020 with false identification. Shihab claimed to have worked with Iraqi terrorists to kill many American servicemen in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 following the invasion. He stated that the motivation behind the assassination plot was anger over the Iraq War.

### Barack Obama

- December 2008: A United States Marine, 20-year-old Kody Ray Brittingham, stationed at Camp Lejeune, wrote that he had taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic." In a signed "letter of intent," he identified President-elect Obama as a "domestic enemy" and the target of Brittingham's planned assassination plot. A search of his barracks uncovered a journal containing white supremacist material. In June 2010, Brittingham was sentenced to 100 months in federal prison.

- April 2009: A plot to assassinate Obama at the Alliance of Civilizations summit in Istanbul, Turkey, was discovered after a man of Syrian origins carrying forged Al Jazeera TV press credentials was found. The man confessed to the Turkish security services details of his plan to kill Obama with a knife. He alleged that he had three accomplices.

- November 2011: 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was influenced by conspiracy theories and fringe religious viewpoints to attempt to murder Obama. Having traveled from his native Idaho, he hit the White House with several rounds fired from a semi-automatic rifle. No one was injured, but a window was broken. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

- 2011 to 2012: The far-right terrorist group FEAR plotted to carry out a series of terror attacks which included assassinating Obama. The plot was foiled when four members of the group were arrested on murder charges and one, Michael Burnett, agreed to co-operate with authorities in return for a lighter sentence.

- October 2012: A mentally ill man named Mitchell Kusick of Westminster, Colorado, was arrested after confessing to his therapist that he intended to kill Obama with a shotgun at a campaign stop in Boulder, Colorado.

- April 2013: Another attempt was made when a letter laced with the toxin ricin was sent to Obama.

- May 2013: Ricin-laced letters were sent to Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg vowing to kill anyone who tried to take away the sender's guns. The letters in this case were sent by actress Shannon Richardson, who tried to frame her husband Nathan for the crime.

- June 2013: Two white supremacists, Glendon Scott Crawford of Galway, New York and Eric Feight of Hudson, New York, were arrested for a plot to kill Muslim Americans and other perceived enemies of Israel with a homemade "radiation gun", described by Crawford as " Hiroshima on a light switch". It later emerged that Crawford had suggested using the device against President Obama as well as several other targets.

- February 2015: Three men from New York City were arrested by the FBI after telling undercover agents about their plans to kill Obama and join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

- October 2018: A package that contained a pipe bomb was sent to former President Obama at his home in Washington, D.C. The package was intercepted by the Secret Service.

- April 2019: Larry Mitchell Hopkins, a member of the United Constitutional Patriots militia, was arrested on April 20 after he allegedly confessed that his militia were training for a planned assassination of Obama and Hillary Clinton.

### Donald Trump

- September 6, 2017: Gregory Lee Leingang, a 42-year-old man from Bismarck, North Dakota, attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in Mandan, North Dakota, while Trump was visiting the state to rally public support. Leingang stole a forklift from an oil refinery and drove toward the presidential motorcade. After the forklift became jammed within the refinery, he fled on foot and was arrested by the pursuing police. While interviewed in detention, he admitted his intent to murder the president by flipping the presidential limousine with the stolen forklift, to the surprise of authorities, who suspected he was merely stealing the vehicle for personal use. The man pleaded guilty to the attempted attack, stealing the forklift, related charges and several other unrelated crimes on the same day. Consequently, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His defense attorney noted a "serious psychiatric crisis".

- November 2017: A man affiliated with Islamic State (IS), whose name was not revealed, was arrested by the Philippine National Police in Rizal Park, Manila, for reportedly planning to assassinate Trump during the diplomatic ASEAN Summit. In the week prior to the failed killing, the Secret Service already suspected a planned assault on the president because of the general presence of IS in the Philippines and because of threats by many people against the president on social media. Before the landing of Trump's airplane, the Secret Service discovered a credible terrorist threat from a man who threatened to kill the president on social media, quickly tracking down and arresting the terrorist. The government disclosed the incident to the public, after a year of silence, in a television documentary.

- On September 15, 2024, while former President Trump was touring his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, his security detail spotted an armed man positioned behind a fence, between 300 and 500 yards from Trump. They opened fire on him without warning and the suspect fled on a vehicle. He was later apprehended thanks to the contribution of an eyewitness, who described the vehicle and recalled its registration plate. On the place where the suspect had positioned himself, the Police retrieved an AK-47-styled rifle, two rucksacks and a GoPro. Donald Trump was uninjured despite allegations by some news sources several shots were fired at him.

### Joe Biden

- May 23, 2023: Sai Varshith Kandula, a 19-year-old man from Chesterfield, Missouri (near St. Louis), drove a rented box truck into a barrier that separated the White House grounds from the public. Shortly thereafter he was taken into custody by the United States Park Police and was found to have a Nazi flag in his truck. Kandula expressed admiration for the Third Reich and stated his intentions were to "kill the president" and "seize power".

## Deaths rumored to have been assassinations

### Zachary Taylor

On July 9, 1850, President Zachary Taylor died from an illness that was diagnosed as cholera morbus, which allegedly came after eating cherries and milk at a 4th of July celebration. Almost immediately after his death, rumors began to circulate that Taylor was poisoned by pro-slavery Southerners, and similar theories have persisted into the 21st century. In 1991 a neutron activation analysis conducted on samples of Taylor's remains found no evidence of poisonings due to insufficient levels of arsenic. Political scientist Michael Parenti questions the traditional explanation for Taylor's death. Relying on interviews and reports by forensic pathologists, he argues that the procedure used to test for arsenic poisoning was fundamentally flawed.

### Warren G. Harding

In June 1923, President Warren G. Harding set out on a cross-country Voyage of Understanding, planning to meet with citizens and explain his policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit Alaska, which was then a U.S. territory. Rumors of corruption in the Harding administration were beginning to circulate in Washington, D.C., by 1923, and Harding was profoundly shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently detailing illegal activities by his own cabinet that were allegedly unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia, he developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning. He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now Husky Stadium) at the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. A scheduled speech in Portland, Oregon, was canceled. The president's train proceeded south to San Francisco. Upon arriving at the Palace Hotel, he developed pneumonia. Harding died in his hotel room of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35 PM on August 2, 1923. The formal announcement, printed in The New York Times of that day, stated: "A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week.

Naval physicians surmised that Harding had suffered a heart attack. The Hardings' personal medical advisor, homeopath and Surgeon General Charles E. Sawyer, disagreed with the diagnosis. His wife Florence Harding refused permission for an autopsy, which soon led to speculation that he had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by Florence, as he apparently had been unfaithful to her. Gaston Means, an amateur historian and gadfly, noted in his book The Strange Death of President Harding (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death led to suspicions that he had been poisoned. A number of individuals attached to him, both personally and politically, would have welcomed Harding's death, as they would have been disgraced in association by Means' assertion of Harding's "imminent impeachment".


Arthur Byron

# Arthur Byron

## Abstract

Arthur William Byron (April 3, 1872 – July 16, 1943) was an American actor who played a mixture of British and American roles in films.

## Early years

Born in Brooklyn, Byron was the son of actors Kate Crehan and Oliver Doud Byron. He was a nephew of the stage actress Ada Rehan, his maternal aunt.

## Career

Byron started his theatrical career in February 1889 at the age of 17 with his father's dramatic company. In 1939 he celebrated his 50 years in showbusiness.

He appeared in more than 300 plays and played with stars like Maxine Elliott, Ethel Barrymore, John Gielgud, Katherine Cornell, Maude Adams and Minnie Maddern Fiske.

He was the founder and one-time president of The Actors' Equity Association and he also served as an officer of The Lambs and the Actor's fund of America.

Byron appeared many times at the Lakewood Playhouse in Maine.

## Personal life and death

Byron was married to Kathryn Keyes, and they had two daughters and a son. He died of a heart ailment, from which he suffered for some years, in Hollywood in 1943. He was cremated and his ashes were sent to the Byron summer home in Maine.

## Selected filmography

- Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride (1904, Edison)

- Fast Life (1932) - John D. Jameson

- The Mummy (1932) - Sir Joseph Whemple

- 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) - Warden Paul Long

- Gabriel Over the White House (1933) - Jasper Brooks - Secretary of State

- The Silk Express (1933) - Conductor Clark

- Private Detective 62 (1933) - Tracey (uncredited)

- The Mayor of Hell (1933) - Judge Gilbert

- College Coach (1933) - Dr. Phillip Sargent

- Two Alone (1934) - Slag

- The House of Rothschild (1934) - Baring

- Stand Up and Cheer! (1934) - John Harly

- Fog Over Frisco (1934) - Everett Bradford

- The Notorious Sophie Lang (1934) - Police Insp. Stone

- The Man with Two Faces (1934) - Dr. Kendall

- That's Gratitude (1934) - Thomas Maxwell

- Marie Galante (1934) - Gen. Gerald Phillips

- The President Vanishes (1934) - President Craig Stanley

- The Secret Bride (1934) - Governor W.H. Vincent

- Shadow of Doubt (1935) - Morgan Bellwood

- The Whole Town's Talking (1935) - Spencer

- The Casino Murder Case (1935) - Richard Kinkaid

- Murder in the Fleet (1935) - Capt. John Winslow

- Oil for the Lamps of China (1935) - No. 1 Boss

- The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) - Mr. Erickson

- The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) - (scenes deleted) (final film role)


1852 in Germany

# 1852 in Germany

## Abstract

Events from the year 1852 in Germany.

## Incumbents

- King of Bavaria – Maximilian II

- King of Hanover – George V

- King of Prussia – Frederick William IV

- King of Saxony – Frederick Augustus II

## Births

- January 11 – Constantin Fehrenbach, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1926)

- May 2 – Max von Gallwitz, German general (d. 1937)

- May 31 - Julius Richard Petri, German bacteriologist (d. 1921)

- June 25 - Friedrich Loeffler, German bacteriologist (d. 1915)

- October 9 – Emil Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919) December 10

- Felix Graf von Bothmer, German general (d. 1937)

- December 19 – Albert A. Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)

## Deaths

- June 21 – Friedrich Fröbel, German pedagogue (b. 1782)

- October 15 – Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, German gymnastics educator (b. 1778)

- November 17 – Adam Karl August von Eschenmayer, German philosopher (b. 1768)


Shenzhen Stock Exchange

# Shenzhen Stock Exchange

## Abstract

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE; Chinese: 深圳证券交易所) is a stock exchange based in the city of Shenzhen, in the People's Republic of China. It is one of three stock exchanges operating independently in Mainland China, the others being the Beijing Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It is situated in the Futian district of Shenzhen.

## History

On 1 December 1990, Shenzhen Stock Exchange was founded. In January 1992, Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour saved China's capital market and the two stock exchanges (the other was the Shanghai Stock Exchange). Before 1997, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange was under municipal control and termed an "experimental point".

In July 1997, the State Council of China decided that the Shenzhen Stock Exchange would be directly managed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. It also affirmed that China's stock exchanges had a legitimate role in the socialist market economy.

In May 2004, the SME Board was launched. In October 2009, the ChiNext market (Chinese: 创业板) was inaugurated.

## Hours

The exchange has pre-market sessions from 09:15 am to 09:25 am and normal trading sessions from 09:30 am to 11:30 am and 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm China Standard Time (UTC+08:00) on all days of the week except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays declared by the Exchange in advance.

## ChiNext

The exchange opened the ChiNext board (Chinese: 创业板), a NASDAQ -type exchange for high-growth, high-tech start-ups, on 23 October 2009.

### Overview

ChiNext is also called the second stock trading market. It refers to the securities trading market outside the main board. It provides growth space for small and medium-sized enterprises and emerging companies that cannot be listed in the main board. It is an effective supplement to the main board market. The biggest feature of the ChiNext is that it has low entry barriers and strict operation requirements, which help potential small and medium-sized enterprises obtain financing opportunities.

History

The establishment of the ChiNext was a response to the growing demand for alternative financing options for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. Prior to its creation, many SMEs had difficulty raising capital as they did not meet the strict listing requirements of China's established stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The ChiNext was launched with 28 listed companies and quickly gained attention from investors as a platform for investing in high-growth industries such as technology, healthcare, and renewable energy. Over time, the number of listed companies on the ChiNext has grown, and as of 2021, there are over 800 companies listed on the exchange.

In the years since its establishment, the ChiNext has undergone several reforms aimed at improving transparency, promoting more sustainable growth, and reducing risks associated with speculative trading. For example, in 2016, the exchange introduced a new registration-based IPO system, which simplified the listing process for new companies.

### Influences

The influences of ChiNext includes boosting innovation and entrepreneurship and attracting foreign investment. Specifically, ChiNext has played a key role in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in China by providing a platform for smaller and innovative companies to raise capital and grow their businesses. This has led to the development of startups and technology companies in China.

## Market data

(As of January 2021)

- Listed companies: 2,375

- Market capitalization: RMB 34,463,161.66million (US$5.24 trillion)

## Listings

### Major listing requirements

The listing requirements for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) are established by the China Securities Regulatory Commission and are designed to ensure the quality of companies listed on the exchange. The major listing requirements for the SZSE include:

- Minimum size requirements: Companies seeking to list on the SZSE must have a certain level of size, as measured by net assets or revenue.

- Financial performance: Companies must demonstrate a strong financial performance, with a track record of profitability and positive cash flow. Specifically, one of the following requirements must be met: 1.The estimated market value is not less than 1 billion yuan, the net profit in the most recent year is positive, and the operating income is not less than 100 million yuan; 2. The estimated market value is not less than 5 billion yuan, and the operating income in the most recent year is not less than 300 million yuan.

- Corporate governance: Companies must demonstrate a commitment to good corporate governance, with a clear and transparent management structure. Specifically, the issuer's basic accounting practice is proper and its preparation and disclosure of the financial statements is in compliance with the Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises and relevant information disclosure rules, and fairly reflects in all material respects its financial position, the results of operations and cash flows, and its financial report has been issued an unqualified opinion by a CPA in the last three years.

- Disclosure and transparency: Companies must provide full and timely disclosure of financial and other information, and must comply with all regulatory reporting requirements.

## Building

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange building is a skyscraper with a height of 245.8 metres (806 ft) and 49 floors. Its construction started in 2008 and was finished in 2013. The building was designed by Rem Koolhaas 's firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The building is located at 2012 Shennan Blvd., Futian District. With an area of 200,000 square metres, five high speed elevators and a futuristic design, the partners involved in the design and construction of this sky scraper included Rem Koolhaas, David Gianotten, Ellen van Loon and Shohei Shigematsu and construction by The Second Construction Co., Ltd of China Construction Third Engineering Bureau, a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation.