In an unprecedented streak of political violence in California, United States, President Gerald Ford survived two separate close-range assassination attempts within a span of just seventeen days. On September 5th in Sacramento, Manson Family disciple Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme drew a pistol but failed to chamber a round, and on September 22nd in San Francisco, radical activist Sara Jane Moore fired a shot that was narrowly deflected by a quick-acting bystander. Both attempts failed due to sheer mechanical luck.

These bizarre, back-to-back assassination attempts by radical women deeply unsettled the American public, heavily influencing the gritty, cynical tone of late 1970s counterculture literature. The event inspired Stephen Sondheim's dark, poetic musical 'Assassins', which explored the surreal, fractured psychology of America's political attackers.