On this day in 1981, former President Ronald W. Reagan was shot outside a Washington, D.C., hotel. Reagan was rushed to the nearby George Washington University Hospital, where staff surgeons Benjamin Aaron and Joseph Giordano operated to remove a .22-caliber bullet through a 6-inch incision just below his left nipple. The bullet struck Reagan’s seventh rib and penetrated his left lung by 3 inches, causing the lung to collapse. Doctors removed the bullet and re-inflated Reagan’s lung. Reagan also received 2 and one-half quarts of transfused blood. The operation lasted about two hours, and Reagan was never in grave danger, doctors said later.

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