My biggest fear is that after I'm dead, my writings will be referred to as 'confused clutchings.'

Thursday, January 20, 2000

Tecumseh's Curse

Have you ever heard of Tecumseh's Curse? This proto-urban-legend claims that native American tribal leader Tecumseh so hated Willam Henry Harrison that he placed a curse upon him and every U.S. President that was elected in a year which ends in a zero. Of course, this is balderdash. It wasn't Tecumseh who cursed our presidential line, it was his brother, the Prophet. Let's see how well that curse worked out:

PresidentElectedDiedNotes
Willam Henry Harrison 18401840Harrison died of pneumonia and was the first US President ever to die in office.
Abraham Lincoln18601865Lincoln was shot by John Wilks Booth.
James A. Garfield18801881Garfield died was shot by Charles Julius Guiteau and died weeks later.
William McKinley19001901McKinley was shot by a Leon Czolgosz in his second term.
Warren G. Harding19201923Harding died of a heart attack.
Franklin D. Roosevelt19401945Roosevelt died during his third term from a stroke.
John F. Kennedy19601963Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Ronald Reagan19802004John W. Hinkley, Jr. almost killed Reagan in 1981. Reagan went on to become the longest-lived US President at 93 years of age.
George W. Bush2000?As far as we can tell, he's breathing.

If we plot this information we get this chart:

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