House of Representatives Fun Fact

I just returned from my third and final trip to Washington to lobby on behalf of my dental school. I worked on some important issues and did some sight-seeing, but I'm not going to bore you here with all the little details. I will, however, share with you what I thought was the coolest "tour-guide" moment of the trip.

After our first appointment with a congressman, my fellow "legislative liaison" and I had a couple hours to wait so we went to the House Chamber in hopes of seeing some of the debate regarding the stimulus package. When we got there we had just barely missed seeing the action because they had recessed for lunch, but we were informed that the pressing matter they had been discussing was whether or not to congratulate the Pittsburgh Steelers on their Super Bowl victory. Nice work boys.

Since there wasn't anything going on, I struck up a conversation with the security guard and asked him if he had any cool stories or information that most people wouldn't know about the room. He shared with us his version of the United States Capitol Shooting Incident in 1954, although the wikipedia version is slightly different[citation needed].

The gist of it is that in 1954 some Peurto Rican Nationalists smuggled weapons into the House Chambers. They were supposedly there as a film crew, but it turns out they had weapons in the bags, not camera equipment! Oh Snap! Six congressmen were injured (wikipedia says 5) but nobody was killed. The interesting part is that they never fixed two of the bullet holes in the room. One can be seen in the ceiling just a few feet from the huge stained glass decorative thingy. Since cameras aren't allowed in the chamber and I haven't been able to find an image on the interwebs, I'm just going to ask you to picture a little hole in a ceiling. That's pretty much what it looks like. Neat-o, huh? Ok you can stop picturing it now.

The other went through a desk and drawer. They repaired the desk and it's noticeable where the stain on the wood is a little bit lighter. They never repaired the desk drawer. Here's the approximate location of the flaw in the desk:


I asked the guy why they never repaired the holes and he shrugged his shoulders and explained that there wasn't any structural damage done so there was no need to repair them. What did I gain from this experience? The desire to write my name in the ceiling of the House Chamber with an Uzi - avoiding any structural damage, of course.