Pro-Trump mob adds to Capitol’s history of violence

This is far from the first time the US Capitol has been scarred by violence.

In 1814, just 14 years after the building opened, British forces in the War of 1812 tried to burn it down, incinerating the Library of Congress. A sudden rainstorm prevented its total destruction.

The building has been bombed several times. There have been shootings. One legislator almost killed another.

The most famous episode occurred in 1954, when four Puerto Rican nationalists unfurled the island’s flag and, shouting ‘‘Freedom for Puerto Rico’’, unleashed a barrage of about 30 shots from the visitors’ gallery of the House. Five congressmen were injured.

In 1915, a German man planted three sticks of dynamite in the Senate reception room. They went off shortly before midnight, when no-one was around. The bomber – who had previously murdered his pregnant wife, and would go on to shoot financier J P Morgan Jr, and bomb a steamship loaded with munitions bound for Britain – killed himself before he could be arrested.

More recently, the Weather Underground set off an explosive in 1971 to protest the US bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War, and the May 19th Communist Movement bombed the Senate in 1983 in response to the US invasion of Grenada. Neither caused any deaths or injuries, but both resulted in extensive damage and led to tougher security measures.

The most deadly attack on the Capitol occurred in 1998, when a mentally ill man fired at a checkpoint and killed two Capitol Police officers. He was arrested and later institutionalised.

In 1835, a deranged house painter tried to shoot two pistols at President Andrew Jackson outside the building. The guns misfired, and Jackson caned his assailant into submission.

And famously, in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks attacked abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner with his cane on the floor of the Senate after the senator gave a speech criticising slavery. Sumner was beaten so badly that three years passed before he could return to Congress. The House failed to expel Brooks, but he resigned – and was immediately re-elected.