The images of protesters storming the United States Congress have caused a commotion around the world.
C inco people died as a result of the attack, launched by supporters of President Donald Trump after the outgoing president was addressed them during a demonstration in Washington DC.
The protesters later stormed the building to denounce what they consider to be electoral fraud of which there is no evidence and which has been rejected by judges in all the instances. The parliamentarians were meeting to formally certify the victory of Democrat Joe Biden.
The president-elect called it an “insurrection” , while the Vice President Mike Pence said the violence had been a “dark day in the history of the US Capitol.”
But this is not the first Once Congress, considered the symbolic heart of American democracy, is struck by violence.
From bombs to foreign invasions, here we tell you four more times in which the US Capitol was attacked.
British forces try to burn it down – 1814 Maybe the most famous attack was that of British forces during the Anglo-American war of 1812.
British troops, led by Vice Admiral S ir Alexander Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross, set fire to the Capitol, which was still under construction, after invading Washington DC in August of 1814.
It was in retaliation for the fire started by the Americans in York, the capital of Upper Canada, a province of the British Empire in the southeast of present-day Canada, which occurred a year earlier.
The Capitol Building survived thanks to a downpour .
The ruins of the Capitol after the British attack. The British also set fire to other iconic buildings in the American capital, including the White House.
The attack of 1814 was the only time a foreign power captured and occupied Washington DC.
In 2014, the British embassy in Washington apologized after tweeting a photo of a White House cake surrounded by flares, “commemorating” the building fire. 200 years earlier.
Following the attack on the Capitol on Wednesday, New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker said there was an interesting parallel between both events, since the two attacks were made on behalf of an individual leader: in 1812 by the King of England and now on behalf of Trump.
In photos: the assault by Trump’s followers on the Washington Capitol Trump asked his supporters to leave the Capitol, but justified them: “These things happen when they take away an electoral victory from great patriots ” “In both cases they abandoned democratic principles in favor of a cult of personality, “he said during a speech in Congress.
The difference, he said,” is that then it was another country that attacked us, and now we generate this hell from within “.
Dynamite attack of July 4, 1915 A century after the British attack, Erich Muenter, a former German professor at Harvard University, blew up three sticks of dynamite in the conference room. Senate reception.
The explosion damaged the building, but no one died.
Muenter later stated that the attack was in response to US financiers who helped United Kingdom to face Germany in World War I.
Writing under a pseudonym In the Washington Evening Star, Muenter said that he hoped the attack “would make enough noise to be heard over the voices crying out for war.”
And added: “This explosion is an exclamation point in my call for peace. ”
A day after the attack, Muenter shot and wounded him to financier JP Morgan Jr ., before being subdued by Morgan’s butler and arrested.
He ended up taking his own life.
Attack of the Puerto Rican nationalists – 1954 March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists entered the visitor gallery of the Chamber of Representatives and, waving the island’s flag, shouted “Freedom for Puerto Rico” while opening fire.
Five congressmen were injured.
“I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico! ! ” shouted the leader of the group, Lolita Lebron , during her arrest.
Lolita Lebron during her arrest in 1983. Lebron was sentenced to 50 years behind bars, while the three men who accompanied her received a sentence of 75 years in prison.
The sentences were commuted later by President Jimmy Carter.
Carter said the release It was “a significant humanitarian gesture and would be seen as such by much of the international community.”
The group was cheered by a crowd upon their return to Puerto Rico.
‘Resistance Conspiracy’ – 1983 November 7, 1983, an explosion ripped through the second floor of the Senate. A few minutes before, someone claiming to belong to a group called the Armed Resistance Unit called a switchboard in the Capitol, warning of an attack.
According to that person, the attack was in retaliation for the US military actions in Grenada and Lebanon .
There were no casualties, but the explosion caused costly damage.
Police cars outside the Capitol after the attack on 1983. In 1988, FBI agents arrested seven members of the radical leftist group Resistance Conspiracy for the attack on the Capitol and separate explosions at Fort McNair and Washington Navy Yard, at 1983 and 1984.
Linda Evans and Laura Whitehorn were imprisoned for conspiracy and malicious destruction of government property in 1991.
Both are now free.
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