Garfield Assassination
A .44 caliber Belgian-made British Bulldog revolver was used to assassinate US President James Garfield on July 2, 1881 by disgruntled lawyer Charles Guiteau, who was angry that Garfield had not appointed him to a Federal post. Guiteau reportedly wanted to purchase a British Bulldog revolver with ivory grips instead of wooden ones (as he believed they would look nicer when the gun was displayed in a museum) but decided not to spend the extra dollar that the ivory-gripped model would have cost. In all, he paid $10 for the revolver, a box of cartridges, and a penknife, before spending the next day familiarising himself with the revolver's operation and firing 10 practice shots with it into trees along the banks of the Potomac River. He eventually used the revolver to shoot Garfield a week or so later in the Sixth Street Railway Station in Washington, D.C. After Guiteau's trial, the revolver was placed in the Smithsonian Institution but some time later the revolver disappeared.
The large caliber British Bulldogs are now considered collector's pieces, since their ammunition is no longer commercially manufactured.
Read more about this topic: British Bull Dog Revolver
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—James A. Garfield (1831–1881)