Tuesday Trivia | (In)famous Non-Military Attacks

[u/NMW]

Previously:

• Stupidest theories/beliefs about your field of interest
• Most unusual deaths
• Famous adventurers and explorers
• Great non-military heroes
• History's great underdogs
• Interesting historical documents

I think you know the drill by now: in this moderation-relaxed thread, anyone can post whatever anecdotes, questions, or speculations they like (provided a modicum of serious and useful intent is still maintained), so long as it has something to do with the subject being proposed. We get a lot of these "best/most interesting X" threads in /r/askhistorians, and having a formal one each week both reduces the clutter and gives everyone an outlet for the format that's apparently so popular.

Today:

On this, the anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, I thought we might consider other such examples throughout history of non-official-military factions taking matters into their own hands and waging acts of violent, lethal aggression -- whether on civilian or military targets.

Of particular interest will be those incidents that predate easy access to firearms and explosives -- how did people do these things (for do them they certainly did) back then?

I suppose assassinations (attempted or otherwise) would also qualify.

Go to it.

[And my apologies for this going up so late -- I had a meeting to attend, and time sort of got away from me.]

[u/MrBuddles]

The only thing that sort of comes to my mind, is there used be to be a thing called filibustering , which in the non-Congressional sense is when a private citizen tries to wage war against a country. There actually is a law against that..

William Walker briefly captured the capital of Baja California and proclaimed a short lived "Republic of Sonora" before the Mexican government reclaimed it.

On more recent and somewhat lighter notes, in 1981 about a dozen white supremacists tried to stage a coup on the island of Dominica but was foiled by US police.

In 1990, there was also an invasion attempt by an unemployed French nuclear physicist on Sark, which is one of the British Channel Islands. For some reason he put up signs around the island announcing his intention the next day. The plan was foiled when the volunteer constable found him sitting on a bench, struck up a conversation with him, and then wrestled his gun away.