Hinckley

Coordinates: 52°32′29″N 1°22′21″W / 52.5413°N 1.3725°W / 52.5413; -1.3725

Hinckley is a market town in southwest Leicestershire, England. It is administered by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. Hinckley is the second largest town in the administrative county of Leicestershire, after Loughborough.

Hinckley is situated near the larger town of Nuneaton in Warwickshire.

History

Hinckley has a history going back to Anglo-Saxon times; the name Hinckley is Anglo Saxon: "Hinck" is someone's name and "ley" is a meadow. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, Hinckley was quite a large village, and grew over the following 200 years into a small market town—a market was first recorded there in 1311. There is evidence of an Anglo Saxon church - the remnants of an Anglo Saxon sun-dial being visible on the diagonal buttress on the south-east corner of the chancel.

In 2000, archaeologists from Northampton Archaeology discovered evidence of Iron Age & Romano-British settlement on land near Coventry Road and Watling Street.

John Hinckley, Jr.

John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. (born May 29, 1955), attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, as the culmination of an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster. Reported to have been driven by an obsessional fixation on her, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained under institutional psychiatric care since then. Public outcry over the verdict led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, which altered the rules for consideration of mental illness of defendants in Federal Criminal Court proceedings in the United States.

Early life

John W. Hinckley, Jr., was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and moved with his family to Dallas, Texas, at the age of 4. His late father was John Warnock Hinckley, Sr., president of World Vision United States, and Chairman and President of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation. His mother is Jo Ann (Moore) Hinckley. He has two older siblings: sister Diane and brother Scott. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, Scott Hinckley became vice president of his father's oil business. Their sister, Diane, graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.