HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY!
THREATS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT (RE: CANDY THROWN AT PRESIDENT)
While volunteering at the National Archives, I was working on a project reviewing some records of the Secret Service and came across a document with the above title. It is an account of an event on 3/5/33 where a man witnessed a “white colored missile” flying through the air that hit the head of president Franklin Roosevelt. The witness watched FDR go by in a car, waving to onlookers and struck by the object. When he examined the object, he found the “missile” was a “peppermint ball about 1 inch in diameter, color white with pink stripes. He could not say who threw it.
The witness, Alexander Gawlis of Baltimore, sent a letter reporting the event to the Secret Service. This document is an account of the follow-up interview Mr. Gawlis who, in the opinion of the agent, “is not a crank or a radical.”
