Saturday Scenes

On the 30th of January 1835, Richard Lawrence made the first known assassination attempt on an American president. Convinced that he was truly King Richard III of England (1452-1485) and that somehow President Andrew Jackson was to blame for his poverty, Lawrence bought two derringers and waited outside the Capitol to exact his revenge and regain his throne.

AmericanHeritage.com / Trying to Assassinate President Jackson

In the soft rain before the capitol, he aimed his shaking hand at Jackson’s chest and squeezed one pistol’s trigger. The hammer snapped down, detonating the small percussion cap that was supposed to spark the gunpowder in the barrel. The cap let out a loud bang but nothing more. Lawrence dropped that pistol and aimed the second one, but it misfired as well. The would-be assassin caught the crowd’s attention with the noise of the two explosions, but he did Jackson no harm.

Andrew Jackson, nicknamed Old Hickory, was no stranger to a fight and he immediately reacted by attacking Lawrence with his cane. Richard Lawrence was disarmed and taken away, under arrest. He insisted he had good reason to attack and “…boasted about his assassination attempt, shocked only that the crowd had failed to defend him from Jackson.”

And THEN, on the 30th of January in 2010, these killer-good photographs were taken. Coincidence? I think not!

Who took these great photographs? These people right here:

• twasntme
• Sithefire
• RAFairman
• Korwhai
• tradingnothing
• raumsinn
• akrabat
• pendrift
• gwilkinson1989
• elibrody
• sarahfenn
• apgphoto
• LannaGirl
• CliffStanford
• JanetIsserlis
• UKMelia
• timewind
• pixelfreund
• akaSylvia

It’s easy to take part!

1) Take a photo on a Saturday and upload it to a site like Flickr or Twitpic
2) Twitter the url for your photograph to @SatScenes
3) Watch for the next post on Twitter Blog to see a great set of all the photographs together.

I’m looking forward to seeing your scenes!