Bullets, explosions, stabbing, sticking, and assassination attempts ... the history of violence in the US Congress
A mob of supporters of US President Donald Trump stormed the halls of Congress, the latest episode of violence that cast a dark shadow over the Capitol in a chain of events that began with an attack in which the British set fire to the building during the War of 1812.
And after five people lost their lives on the Capitol campus, including a woman who was shot by police and a wounded officer in the clashes that took place, it seems that Wednesday's events were the bloodiest in the citadel of American democracy in 200 years.
However, David Meyer, a professor of social science at the University of California, Irvine, said that the unrest is unique from other events because it has its origin in the White House.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Mayer, author of "The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America" (Protest Politics: Social Movements in America) said: "The Capitol is a magnet for protest, and sometimes the protest is violent."
"It is really strange this time that the president of the United States openly encouraged people to resort to violent means against his political opponents," he added.
Here is a timeline of some of the most notorious acts of violence in Congress, including shootings, bombings, knife attacks, canes and even an assassination attempt.
1814 - Invading British forces set fire to the original Capitol building while it was still under construction and burn furniture in the House and the original hall of the Supreme Court.
1835 - In the first known assassination attempt on an American president, a disgruntled painter tried to shoot President Andrew Jackson as he left a funeral in the House of Representatives.
The attacker's pistol malfunctioned and failed to fire, and Jackson was furious, and he hit his assailant with his cane before others took control of him.
A court ruled that the defendant was not guilty of insanity and was placed in a mental health institution.
1856 - Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts abolitionist Senator, was brutally beaten with a stick by Preston Brooks, a colleague from South Carolina, in the Senate hall after a speech criticizing slavery.
1915 - A former Harvard German professor uses a timer to detonate three sticks of dynamite in an empty Senate reception hall during the House recess.
Then the professor, angered by the help of the American financiers for the British in the face of Germany during World War I, fled to New York, where he shot the banker J.B.
Morgan and lightly injured him.
The university professor was later arrested and then committed suicide in prison.
1954 - A group of four armed Puerto Rico Nationalists indiscriminately open fire in the House of Representatives from a visitors' balcony and spread the Puerto Rico flag.
Five members of Congress were injured.
The four attackers, three men and a woman, were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms that were commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
1971 - A bomb planted by the extremist anti-war group Weatherground in protest against the US-backed invasion of Laos explodes in a restroom in the Senate section of the Capitol, causing major damage but causing no injuries.
1983 - A bomb hidden under a seat outside the Senate hall blew up hinges on a door leading to the office of Robert Baird, the Democratic leader in the Senate at the time, and damaged a board of famous statesman Daniel Webster, a lawyer.
No one was injured.
An extremist left-wing group said it carried out the bombing in response to US military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada.
1998 - A gunman breaks into the security barrier in the Capitol and opens fire, mortally wounding two police officers, and winds his way to the office of Representative Tom DeLay, a Republican leader at the time.
A tourist was also injured in the attack.
The two dead officers became the first ordinary citizens to have their bodies inscribed in their honor in the Capitol's rotunda.
2001 - United Airlines Flight 93 crashes into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers storm the cockpit to defeat suicide hijackers who were likely to attack the Capitol, investigators later said.
2013 - A woman tried to drive into her car a White House security post, and the authorities chased her to the Capitol, where she was shot dead.
The authorities found her baby girl unharmed in the car.
2021 - Hundreds of President Trump's supporters storm the Capitol Building, occupy it for hours and loot the offices, forcing officials to evacuate lawmakers and halting the confirmation hearing on the outcome of the November presidential election.
Police shot a woman amid rioters in a hallway inside the building, and the Capitol Police said one of the police officers who were injured in clashes with protesters died on Thursday.
Three other people died of medical causes on the campus of Congress during the unrest.
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