|
|
Sep 8, 2010
register for free | contact us |
||
|
|
|||
|
Sign in
or
Register
forgot password? |
||
|
Viewed 132 times -
Published on Nov 6, 2009
"Curse" Caused 7 Presidents To Die In Office? Between 1840 and 1960, there were seven United States presidents who were elected in years that ended in zero. Every 20 years, one of the presidents died in office; four were assassinated while the other three died of natural causes. This strange rash of early deaths began with William Henry Harrison (President # 9) and ended when Ronald Reagan survived his two terms as President (# 40). President Harrison was elected in 1840. His slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too," referring to his victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 and his veep, John Tyler. Harrison died of pneumonia exactly one month after he stood out in the cold to give a two-hour inauguration speech. The man who wrote that speech was Daniel Webster. In 1860, President Lincoln (# 16) became our first Republican president. John Wilkes Booth ended Lincoln's second term just five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, which ended the Civil War. In 1880, twenty years after Lincoln was elected, James A. Garfield (# 20) was elected president. Less than three months later, he was assassinated. In a weird twist of fate, the inventor of the world's first metal detector tried to save the president's life by searching for the bullet in his body. Every time the metal detector made a buzzing noise, the inventor and the doctors assumed that they had found the location of the bullet, so they continued to probe his wounds looking for it. As a result, they did more damage than if the doctors would have just let the bullet remain in his body. And who was the inventor of this metal detector? None other than Alexander Graham Bell! In 1900, twenty years after Garfield was elected, William McKinley (# 25) won re-election to his second term by defeating his same opponent from four years earlier, William Jennings Bryan. Less than a year later, McKinley was shot. In 1920, twenty years after McKinley was elected, Warren G. Harding (# 29) was elected. President Harding broke tradition and died from a stroke, but the so-called "curse" was not over. In 1940, twenty years after Harding was elected, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his third term as president. He was elected to a fourth term in 1944. Like President Harding, Roosevelt managed to avoid assassination, but he died in office in 1945 of a cerebral hemorrhage. He, too, is part of the "curse." In 1960, twenty years after Roosevelt was elected, John F. Kennedy was elected (# 35). In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. In 1980, twenty years after Kennedy was elected, Ronald Reagan (# 40) became our nation's oldest president at the time of his election. He managed to survive an assassination attempt by John Hinckley, thus ending the so-called curse. So there you have it . every twenty years from 1840 to 1980, a United States president was either assassinated and killed, died in office or survived an assassination attempt. This series of events is known as "Tecumseh's Curse." And just who was this Tecumseh fellow? He was the Indian leader whose troops were defeated by William Henry Harrison in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. He died in the War of 1812 in the Battle of the Thames in Canada. And what happened to the man who wrote Harrison's two-hour inauguration speech, Daniel Webster? He tried - and failed - three different times to win the presidency himself. Ironically, he would have become president on two separate occasions if he had just accepted the vice president's position that he had been offered; first by Harrison in 1840 and then by our 12th president, Zachary Taylor, in 1848. Unfortunately for Webster's career, he turned down both future presidents. Taylor, by the way, died in office of natural causes. Of course. Paul Niemann's column is syndicated in more than 80 newspapers. He can be reached at niemann7@aol.com c Paul Niemann 2009 Comments:
Submit Your Comment:
|
|
| ©2009 All rights reserved. www.hopestarjournal.com | No portion of this site may be copied or reproduced without consent | UNSUBSCRIBE |
