PRESIDENTS ELECTED IN "0" YEARS •
For years people whispered that U.S. presidents elected in years ending with "0" were doomed to die in office. From 1840 through 1960, every president elected in the 20-year cycle died while he was still president. (Some called this "The Curse of Tecumseh" after the Shawnee chieftan whose brother allegedly predicted the presidential doom in 1836.)
Ronald Reagan finally broke the "curse" by serving two full terms as president before stepping down in 1989 -- though he had to survive a 1981 assassination attempt to do so.
Here's the full roll call of 0-year presidents through Reagan:
1800: THOMAS JEFFERSON served two full terms, 1801-1809.
1820: JAMES MONROE served two full terms, 1817-1825.
1840: WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON was 68 years old when he delivered his inaugural address on March 3, 1841. The speech was a stemwinder, lasting an hour and 40 minutes in frigid weather, with Harrison refusing to wear a coat or hat. The new president came down with a cold which rapidly developed into pneumonia. Harrison was bedridden for a month and finally died on April 4.
1860: ABRAHAM LINCOLN was just beginning his second term when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. on the evening of April 14, 1865. Lincoln survived the night but died the next morning at a house across the street from the theater. Lincoln's death came only six days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox and the end of the Civil War.
1880: JAMES GARFIELD was shot by assassin Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881 in a Washington railway station. The shots were not immediately fatal; Garfield lived for two months before dying from complications on September 19th.
1900: WILLIAM McKINLEY was elected in 1896 and re-elected in 1900. He was attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York when he was shot by unemployed millworker Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901. He died a week later as a result of gangrene caused by the bullet wounds. (McKinley was replaced by Theodore Roosevelt, who a decade later was shot but not killed while trying to regain the presidency.)
1920: WARREN HARDING made a cross-country rail tour in 1923, a major undertaking for that time. Harding became the first president to visit Alaska, but while returning south to California he came down with intestinal cramps and then pneumonia. While convalescing from these illnesses Harding suffered an apparent stroke and died on August 2 in San Francisco.
1940: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, first elected in 1932, was beginning an unprecedented fourth term when he died in April of 1945. Worn down by years of exertion leading the country during the Great Depression and World War II, FDR suffered a cerbral hemorrhage while on a working vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia. His last words have become well known: "I have a terrific headache."
1960: JOHN F. KENNEDY's death has perhaps replaced Lincoln's as the most famous presidential assassination. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald during a motorcade through Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Two days later Oswald was himself shot and killed by Jack Ruby.
1980: RONALD REAGAN served two full terms, 1981-1989. He survived an assassination attempt by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981.
