Death of US Presidents

Lincoln & Kennedy

The Coincidences

President Abraham Lincoln and President John F. Kennedy died in tragic circumstances. Curiously, both the Presidents were elected exactly one
hundred years apart (1860 and 1960).

Further how does one explain that :

Both the Presidents were assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of their
wives.

Each wife had lost a son while living at the White House.

Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theater. Kennedy was killed in a Lincoln
convertible manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.

The first name of Lincoln's private secretary was John, the first name of
Kennedy's private secretary was Lincoln.

John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln's assassin) was born in 1839.

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939, one hundred years later.

Both the assassins were Southerners who held extremist views. Both the
assassins were murdered before they could be brought to trial.

Both the Presidents were deeply involved in civil rights for Black people.

Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a barn. Lee Harvey Oswald shot
Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.

Both President's were killed by a bullet that entered the head from behind.

Both the Presidents were succeeded by vice-presidents named Johnson who
were Southern Democrats and former Senators.

Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908, exactly
a hundred years later.

LINCOLN and KENNEDY, each has seven letters. The names of both the
assassins are of 15 letters each.

Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson, the Presidents who succeeded the
assassinated Presidents have 13 letters each in their names.

The assassinated presidents were Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley
and Kennedy

Those who died of diseases in office were F.D. Roosevelt, W.H. Harrison,
Taylor, and Harding.

Disabled by "disease" includes Eisenhower, Wilson, Reagan, and perhaps
L.B. Johnson and the unsuccessful assassination attempts, which resulted in
serious injury in the case of Reagan. (Reagan escaped death by only 1/4 inch
from a gunshot to the heart)

William Henry Harrison - Ninth President - 1841

The "curse" actually started with William Henry Harrison in 1840.

The Whigs, in 1840 presented their candidate William Henry Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren.

Harrison was actually of the Virginia planter aristocracy. He was born at Berkeley in 1773. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond.

Suddenly, in 1791, Harrison switched interests. He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the Regular Army, and headed to the Northwest, where he spent much of his life. In the campaign against the Indians, Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened most of the Ohio area to settlement. After resigning from the Army in 1798, he became Secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the Territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In 1801 he became Governor of the Indiana Territory, serving 12 years.

His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness. When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements.

The threat against settlers became serious in 1809. An eloquent and energetic chieftain, Tecumseh, with his religious brother, the Prophet, began to strengthen an Indian confederation to prevent further encroachment. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack the confederacy.

While Tecumseh was away seeking more allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet's town. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded.

The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison's fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh's confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier.

In the War of 1812 Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest.

Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60.

When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed "seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them."

But before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died--the first President to die in office--and with him died the Whig program.

Harrison was referred to as the hero of "Tippecanoe" hence the campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!" John Tyler was the governor of Virginia who became president upen Harrison's death. He sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War and his name was removed from the list of presidents in the White House.

A legend states that Harrison was cursed by an Indian Shaman for a massacre of Native Americans at the battle for which he became famous!

Harrison was a famous 'Indian Fighter' in the time period 1800-1815 - the battle of Tippecanoe took place in 1811, but the "curse" was the result of Harrison personally executing the great Indian chief Tecumseh in 1813!

A few years later, Harrison resigned from the Army and entered politics. He ran against Martin Van Buren in 1836 and lost; he ran again and won in 1840 but contracted pneumonia only a few months after the inauguration and died on April 4, 1841. Notice that the date April 4, 1841 is exactly 140 years to the week that President Ronald Reagan was shot! To put it another way- Harrison contracted his fatal disease and was probably bedridden on March 30 1841 although he actually died a week later.

President Abraham Lincoln: Elected in 1860. On April 14, 1865 John Wilkes Booth came up behind Mr. Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head near point blank range. He died the next morning. (actually, probably killed by doctors probing for bullet, but he would have been a "vegetable" at best had he lived)

President James Abram Garfield. Elected in 1880. On July 21, 1881 Garfield was boarding a train in Washington DC when he was shot by Charles Giteau. The President died on September 19,1881. assassinated (Actually, Garfield was definitely killed by his doctors probing for bullet; he would have completely recovered otherwise -- the doctors who thought the bullet went where in fact it did were overruled by their elders who thought otherwise, and who stuck unclean metal probes into the President's wounds in vain attempts to locate the bullet, introducing infection and making brand new holes and paths that just confused them all the more. The metal detector they tried would have worked to find the bullet, but they didn't think to move him off the metal bedsprings, so instead they kept poking, believing that Alexander Graham Bell's invention was useless.)

President McKinley - Elected First term - 1896 - Elected Second term - 1900 - Shortly after 4 o'clock on September 6, 1901when one of the throng which surrounded the Presidential party, a medium-sized man, of ordinary appearance, and plainly dressed in black, approached as if to greet the President. Both Secretary Cortelyou and Mr. Milburn noticed that the man's hand was swathed in a bandage, or handkerchief; reports of bystanders differ as to which hand. He worked his way amid the stream of people up to the edge of the dais until he was within two feet of the Chief Executive. The President smiled, bowed and extended his hand in that spirit of geniality which the American people so well know, when suddenly the sharp crack of a revolver rang out loud. McKinley may have been saved if doctors knew where the bullet was lodged. Since he was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY there was an interesting new invention on display only a few yards from where McKinley lay -- the X-Ray machine! If they had carried him those few yards to this exhibit, doctors could have determined the exact location of the bullet, and would have probably been able to save his life. But as fate would have it, they did not consider the possibility and he died some days later from his wounds.

Elected in 1920. Warren Harding became the 29th President. Two years into office, he died of a heart attack. Although history has not been kind to Warren G. Harding, with personal and political scandals dominating Harding historiography until the 1960s, historians have reexamined and reappraised his presidency in the past twenty years.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Elected in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He died in office in 1945. cerebral hemorrhage (stroke)

President John F. Kennedy - Elected in 1960. November 22, 1963 - President Kennedy was assassinated. He was shot as he drove through Dallas, Texas city in an open car.

Ronald Reagan. Elected 1980. He was shot in 1981 getting into his car on the street and came within 1/4" of losing his life with a bullet that came that close to his heart. John W. Hinckley Jr. was acquitted by reason of insanity for shooting President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He has been held in St. Elizabeth's Hospital since his trial and has petitioned the courts to win his release.

William Henry Harrison -The 9th President, who died in 1841 of pneumonia and pleurisy.

Zachary Taylor --The 12th President, who died in 1850 of bilious fever, typhoid fever, and cholera morbus, following a heat stroke.

Abraham Lincoln--The 16th President, was assassinated in1865. Lincoln was the first of four presidents to be assassinated

James Garfield--The 20th President, who was assassinated in1881.

William McKinley--The 25th President, who was assassinated 1901.

Warren G. Harding --The 29th President, who died in1923 of a suspected heart attack

Franklin Delano Roosevelt --The 32nd President, who died in 1945, of a cerebral hemorrhage

John F. Kennedy-The 35th President, who was assassinated in1963.

Source : http://www.greatdreams.com/prsdeth.htm