What Day Was the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan?

About this date

President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley Jr., along with three others including press secretary James Brady, who was left permanently disabled.

Reagan underwent emergency surgery and made a full recovery, later joking with medical staff in the operating room — a detail widely credited with reassuring a shaken public in the following days.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, a verdict that prompted several US states to subsequently tighten their own insanity-defense laws.

Reagan was 70 years old at the time, and doctors later said the bullet came within an inch of his heart, making his recovery and swift return to public duties widely seen as remarkable.

Hinckley's stated motive, an obsession with actress Jodie Foster following the film "Taxi Driver," became a widely cited and unusual case study in subsequent discussions of celebrity-obsession-driven violence.