On Sept. 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore dropped her son off at his San Francisco school, visited a private gun dealer and, in what she later told the Los Angeles Times was a "a kind of ultimate protest against the system," drew a .38-calibre pistol outside a hotel later in the day, firing at then-president Gerald Ford.

Moore, who had a history of mental illness but had become enmeshed in radical left-wing groups, didn't hit her target in two attempts.

Bizarrely, Moore's wasn't the only attempt on the president's life that month by a woman. Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, a one-time acolyte of murderous cult leader Charles Manson, had been tackled by a Secret Service agent 17 days earlier as she pointed a gun in Ford's direction in Sacramento, Calif.

Moore — whose death at 95 was reported this week — insisted she wasn't influenced by Fromme. She pleaded guilty, while Fromme — not unlike Ryan Routh, convicted this week of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump — proved a somewhat unruly defendant. Both women spent decades in prison and were released in the late 2000s.

On Oct. 25, 1975, a new NBC late-night comedy show aired just its third episode. One sketch on the show piloted by young Canadian producer Lorne Michaels had Laraine Newman guesting on a talk show "Dangerous But Inept" as Fromme, calling the interviewer, played by Jane Curtin, a "fawning fascist sycophant." The sketch ended with Curtin teasing the talk show's purported guest the following week, Moore.

The now-voluminous lore of the early years o