Recently declassified documents reveal that in 1981, a New Zealand teenager attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during the monarch’s tour of the city of Dunedin, the BBC reports. Though the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) claimed at the time that the sound of the shot was a sign falling over, it’s been confirmed that 17-year-old Christopher Lewis fired a shot during a royal parade on October 14, 1981. It was covered up over fears that future royal tours would be put off or cancelled.
“Lewis did indeed originally intend to assassinate the Queen,” the documents read. But he “did not have a suitable vantage point from which to fire, nor a sufficiently high-powered rifle for the range.”
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