by WorldTribune Staff, January 8, 2021
Protesters breached the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, with some making it into the Capitol Rotunda and the Senate Floor.
“The U.S. Capitol has survived many invasions in the past, and it will endure through this one, as well,” Tyler O’Neil noted for PJ Media.
O’Neil listed 6 other times the U.S. Capitol has been breached:
1. The War of 1812
Not long after construction ended on the U.S. Capitol’s two wings in 1811, the British Army invaded Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. British troops partially burned the Capitol on August 24, 1814. Reconstruction took about four years.
2. A bomb in the Senate
On July 2, 1915, before the U.S. entered World War I, German professor Eric Muenter exploded a bomb in the reception room of the U.S. Senate, aiming to stop American support of the Allies. The next morning, Muenter tried to assassinate J.P. Morgan, Jr., son of the financier, whose company served as Great Britain’s principal U.S. purchasing agent for munitions. He committed suicide a few days later.
3. Puerto Rican nationalists
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists shot 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the Ladies’ Gallery, a balcony for visitors, of the House of Representatives chamber in the Capitol. The shooters aimed to advocate for Puerto Rican independence from the U.S. They unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and began shooting at representatives while the House debated an immigration bill. The shooters wounded five representatives, but all of them recovered. They were convicted in federal court and given long sentences, effectively life in prison. In 1978 and 1979, President Jimmy Carter pardoned them, and they returned to Puerto Rico.
4. A leftist bombing
On March 1, 1971, the radical left domestic terror group the Weather Underground, in protest against U.S. military involvement in Laos, exploded a bomb on the ground floor of the U.S. Capitol. President Richard Nixon denounced the bombing as a “shocking act of violence that will outrage all Americans.”
5. Another leftist bombing
On November 7, 1983 the leftist terrorist group Armed Resistance Unit took responsibility for detonating a bomb in the lobby outside the office of Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd. The terrorists claimed they intended to protest the invasion of Grenada. After four and a half years of investigation, federal agents arrested six terrorists and charged them with the bombings of the Capitol, Fort McNair, and the Washington Navy Yard. In December 1990, a federal judge sentenced two of the terrorists to lengthy prison sentences, while the court dropped charges against three co-defendants, who already served prison sentences for related crimes. On the day he left office, President Bill Clinton commuted the sentence of Linda Evans, one of the bombers.
6. The murder of two police officers
On July 24, 1998, Russell Eugene Weston, Jr. burst into the Capitol and opened fire, killing two Capitol Police officers, Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson. Weston’s motives remain unknown and he faced murder charges for the shootings. However, he was committed in a mental institution with paranoid schizophrenia.
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