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This mellowed by time episode of History Daily originally aired on June 2nd, 2022.

It's July 16th, 1936.

On a hot summer's day in London, hundreds of people are gathered in Hyde Park to watch a military parade.

Columns of royal guards dressed in bright red jackets file along Constitution Hill toward Buckingham Palace.

Somewhere in the crowd of spectators, a short man and a shabby brown suit

ducks and leaves through the massive bodies. Eventually he reaches the front,

elbowing his way between two policemen to get a clear view of parade.

They're riding his horse at the front of the procession,

is the British model, King Edward VIII.

A short man on the crowd runs a trembling hand through his thinning blonde hair,

and he reaches into his jacket pumpkin and takes out a revolver.

He raises the gun, takes aim at the king, but just as he's about to pull the trigger,

somebody grabs the man's arm. A cry goes up and before the man can break free,

police officers descend and wrestle him to the ground. In the melee, the gun goes flying

from the man's hand and soaring through the air, before landing at the feet of the king's horse.

The would-be assassin will later be identified as George McMahon, a low-level Irish crook.

In the press, McMahon will be depicted as a crazed lone gunman with no clear motive for assassinating

the king. But during his trial, McMahon will paint a very different picture.

He will claim that he was hired to assassinate King Edward by Italian fascists,

...