Attempted assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933 shooting in Miami, Florida, United States
On February 15, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then president-elect of the United States, survived an assassination attempt while delivering an impromptu speech at night from the back of an open car in Miami, Florida. The would-be assassin, Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara, fired five shots with a handgun, injuring four bystanders and mortally wounding Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was standing on the running board of the car next to Roosevelt. Zangara's intended target, Roosevelt, was unharmed in the attack.
After the assassination attempt, Zangara pleaded guilty to murder and was executed in Florida on March 20, 1933. Roosevelt went on to be the longest-serving president in American history, serving until his death in 1945.
Background
In 1929, a dynamite bomb was mailed to the then-governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The bomb was intercepted by a mailroom worker who accidentally stepped on the parcel, rendering it inert. It was later revealed that same postal employee had created the bomb, hoping to gain financial support by claiming to have found it and saved the Governor's life. It is unclear if the man had any true interest in assassinating Roosevelt. The man was sent to Bellevue Hospital for observation rather than prison.
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This entry incorporates text from “Attempted assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.