Beating the Zero Curse

A few weeks ago, I watched a television program that broke down the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. I can't remember the show, but it used interviews from eyewitnesses and footage from the event to give a minute-by-minute account of the event.

Then, I noted the release last week of Arthur Bremer. UPDATE: The local section of the Washington Post noted the other day that the Laurel Museum received new items related to Bremer's assassination attempt on George Wallace. The memorabilia includes Wallace campaign swag, a Life Magazine issue, signed by Wallace, and news reports of the incident,

Finally, with my recent trip to President's Park (and thanks for the magnet "That is what I said," we put it on the fridge and my son looks at it daily to proclaim "GIANT HEADS!"), I was reminded of the Zero Curse that Reagan beat. So take your seats, kids, the history lesson is about to begin.

Beginning in 1840, every president until Reagan's election in 1980, has died in office. The Zero factor is linked also to the "Curse of Tecumseh," who allegedly stated that William Henry Harrison would die in office, despite the fact that no president had died in office before that point.

The election of 1840 saw William Henry Harrison win the presidency. On Inauguration Day, March 4, 1841, Harrison gave a lengthy speech, in the cold, without his coat. He caught pneumonia and succumbed a month later. John Tyler became the first vice president to rise to the presidency as a result of the president's death.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President on the eve of the United States Civil War. In 1865, as the Civil War was coming to a conclusion, Lincoln decided to go to Ford's Theater for a production of "Our American Cousin." John Wilkes Booth, an actor, shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Lincoln died the next morning.

The third victim of the Zero Factor Curse was James A. Garfield. While walking to a train in July 1881, less than three months after his inauguration, he was approached by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, who shot him at point blank range. Garfield lingered for more than two months, before dying in September, making Chester A. Arthur, the President of the United States.

In 1900, William McKinley was greeting people in Buffalo, New York in 1901, when Leon Czolgosz, a deranged anarchist, shot the President in the chest. McKinley lasted for a week, but Theodore Roosevelt had already been sworn in as President.

When Warren G. Harding died in 1923, it was later alleged at the time that his wife had poisoned him. Was she just trying to keep the curse alive? Harding's wife refused to let them autopsy the President's body. Harding was embroiled in several political scandals as well as rumors of extramarital affairs.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his third term in 1940, much to the chagrin of John Nance Garner, his vice president, who believed he would run at the end of the second term of FDR, but FDR liked it so much he broke the tradition of only two terms. He died in April 1945, a year into his unprecedented fourth term of a cerebral hemorrhage.

1960's presidential election was very close, with John F. Kennedy defeating Richard Nixon by a very close margin. In order to try and solidify support for his reelection bid in 1964, Kennedy traveled to Texas in November 1963. While riding in a convertible limousine, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository. As the car sped away, Kennedy lay mortally wounded in the back of the limo. The 35th President had become the final president to die by an assassin's bullet.

That's all for today. Class dismissed.