Submitted by AdmiralAkbar1 t3_11xih6i in todayilearned
Don't underestimate the power of a short shooter, you never know who's packing a Napoleon complex.
In the Amazon show and book "The Man in the High Castle", Zangara succeeds in his attempt and kills FDR, leading to the Allies losing World War II
Sounds like Giuseppe was sloppy
FDR went to Florida with Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago. My understanding is that it's likely the Chicago mob wanted Cermak dead while he was out of town and that FDR may not have been the actual target.
Ike the spike would've nailed the job though
What about Mack the Knife?
I'm mostly surprised there was never more than 1 person awaiting execution in the fedeal prison system in the US until FDR
I’m not, until relatively recently if you got a death sentence you got taken out and hanged, or taken out back for the firing squad. It wasn’t a months or years long process like it is now
Death rows is more like decades now.
> The average time between sentencing and execution has increased by two-thirds in the past 20 years — from 11.4 years in 2000 to 18.9 years in 2020, according to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The longest was 38 years, as of his execution in 2018.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/12/1097184110/death-row-inmates-execution-time
Plus on top of that, until recently there were very few FEDERAL crimes that were prosecuted with the death penalty in mind. The FBI was still in it's infancy at this time.
Mostly it was up to the states to kill you unless you killed a federal politician or committed treason.
Fun fact: Zangara tried to assassinate FDR because he had toothache and thought it might help (the guy was madder than a box of frogs)
He had an undiagnosed condition that caused stomach pain, which started years before the assassination attempt, but got worse over time. The guy hated capitalism and decided to blame his sickness on capitalism/kill a politician who he thought stood for capitalism.
The guy was probably severely mentally ill but it’s a bit different than how you portray it.
Anyone else knew that because of Assassins the musical and the song "How I Saved Roosevelt" (and an interesting thing is, if the song is to be believed he was originally going to try and assassinate Hoover as he believed Hoover was more directly at fault but, to quote the song, "Hoover up in Washington/it wintertime in Washington/too cold for the stomach in Washington/I go down to Miami, kill Roosevelt")
In the Amazon show and book "The Man in the High Castle", Zangara succeeds in his attempt and kills FDR, leading to the Allies losing World War II
Are there any death columns? Is the whole thing called a death spreadsheet?
Then they added a turn table, hired Suge, and the rest is history.
Unfortunately this is BS. The term is attested nearly 40 years before Zangara's sentencing. Two earlier attestations from the OED:
1894 Rocky Mountain News (Denver). 12 Mar. 3. " Thomas Jordan, who occupies a cell in the death row at Canon City Penitentiary."
1902 Salt Lake Tribune. 23 June. "Six men now occupy cells in ‘death row’ at the [Utah] penitentiary."
tetoffens t1_jd38xhv wrote
Huh, didn't know about this assassination attempt on FDR. And glad I do now, for the funny mental image.
So Giuseppe Zangara decided to try to shoot Roosevelt while he was surrounded by a crowd of people. The problem was Giuseppe was only 5 feet tall. So in order to try to line up his shot and actually see what he was shooting at, he stood on a wobbly chair and then used the shoulder of the woman (who was only a few inches taller) in front of him to try to keep the gun still while he fired.
It's just...I don't want to be one of those people who makes fun of people for their height but come on. Tiny assassin. Makes me think of the guy from the 3rd season of Twin Peaks.