Protesters — many of them angry about vaccine mandates and coronavirus restrictions in Canada — threw small stones at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he boarded a campaign bus in Ontario on Monday.
Trudeau later played down the incident, calling it “no big deal.”
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It’s not the first time protester projectiles have hit Trudeau. A woman hurled pumpkin seeds at the Canadian leader in 2016 to protest a proposal for the extension of an oil pipeline.
But Trudeau is not particularly unlucky: There’s a long history of people chucking things at politicians in public to draw attention to their causes, or as acts of dissent.
Here are some of the most memorable tosses:
The milkshake siege of Nigel Farage’s bus
British Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage was encircled on his campaign bus in 2019 by a few people clad in black and holding milkshakes. This was just days after he was “milkshaked” by a 32-year-old man who doused the British politician with a banana-and-salted-caramel milkshake from Five Guys. The man was charged with common assault.
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The sweet drink had turned into a form of protest across the country. A number of similar milkshake attacks hit divisive candidates for European Parliament elections at the time.
Egg on the head in Australia
Australian Sen. Fraser Anning was egged at a news conference March 16, 2019 after issuing controversial statements in regards to a mosque attack in New Zealand. (Reuters)
A teenager in Australia earned the moniker of “egg boy” in 2019 for cracking an egg on the head of a right-wing lawmaker after the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand.
In a video that went viral, the shell smashed and yolk oozed down the back of Fraser Anning, who had just blamed Muslims for the attack against them that killed at least 50 people. The senator then punched the 17-year-old in the face. William Connolly, a.k.a. “egg boy,” later warned that the attention on him distracted from “the real victims suffering.”
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In another political egging in Australia that same year, a woman who said she was protesting the treatment of asylum seekers hit Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the head with an egg. That one failed to crack.
The ‘Bye-Bye Bush’ shoe that got a statue
This projectile gathered a cult following: The lace-up shoe that made Republican President George W. Bush famously duck inspired a giant bronze statue. The Iraqi journalist who spent nine months in prison for hurling his oxfords at a U.S. commander in chief in 2008 went on to run for parliament.
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It marked the last trip by Bush to Baghdad before he left office, nearly six years after the United States invaded Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction that were not there. His attempts to tout the successes of the war did not go over well. A shoe came flying at him from the back of the news conference. Then came another.
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“This is a goodbye kiss, you dog!” the owner of the size 10s, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, shouted in Arabic before guards tackled him in his socks.
“This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” The shoe toss — which spawned one analysis after another about the meaning of shoe throwing — prompted a footwear model in its honor called the “Bye-Bye Bush.”
Donald Trump sees red (tomatoes)
A 28-year-old man was eventually arrested for lobbing not one but two tomatoes at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in 2016. Both tomatoes missed.
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Later, in Iowa, Trump asked his supporters to “knock the crap out of” any more protesters “getting ready to throw a tomato” at him. “I will pay for the legal fees,” he promised.
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Fans reportedly created a GoFundMe page to help with the tomato lobber’s legal expenses.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s crisis of crust
When former French president Nicolas Sarkozy ran for office in 2007, he was pied in the face — or as the French would call it, “entarté.”
Incidents of lèse-majesté by pastry are common in the country. In 2006, French socialist politician Ségolène Royal was hit with a strawberry and cream pie as she exited a train station in France’s southwest. The 22-year-old student who did it later told a judge it was a “symbolic and humorous act.”
French President Emmanuel Macron was recently the victim of a less savory form of protest when a man slapped him in the face as he began shaking hands with people standing behind a barrier at a public event.
Read more:
Facing ‘anti-vaccine mobs’ on election trail, Trudeau is met with flying gravel at campaign stop
Remember the Iraqi man who threw his shoes at President Bush? He’s running for office.
Milkshake-wielding protesters trap Nigel Farage on his Brexit bus