Ronald Reagan: 30 years since assassination attempt

[Jimmy-J]

Doesn't time fly.

Over the Secret Service radio, the word went out: "Rawhide is OK, Rawhide is OK." And the decision was made to take the president back to the White House - the safest place in Washington.

But Mr Parr, with Reagan in the back of the car, started having doubts. At the city's Dupont Circle he asked the president how he was feeling.

"He said he was doing OK, 'but I think I've cut the inside of my mouth'. And he started spitting up this bright red blood, real frothy, and I took one look at it and I looked at his mouth and I saw that it was ashen grey, little bit of blue around the lips.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12901691

Bit of Trivia for you - He was the first and currently the only 'sitting' U.S President, to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.

From Wikipedia:

There have been multiple assassination attempts and plots on Presidents of the United States; there have been over 20 known attempts to kill sitting and former Presidents as well as Presidents-elect. Four attempts have resulted in sitting Presidents being killed: Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A. Garfield (the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th President). Two other Presidents were injured in attempted assassinations: former President Theodore Roosevelt, and then sitting President Ronald Reagan.

Theodore Roosevelt, was shot at but was a former sitting president at the time of the shooting.

Not the first time Reagan was targeted, he was attacked a few years after leaving office, while giving a speech at a Las Vegas convention, it wasn't an attempt on his life but he could have been injured when a protester threw a crystal award at him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q93XHjsiMd4