What do you know about curses? Today we discussed another event from American history, the Tecumseh War – an armed conflict between the USA and the Tecumseh Confederacy in 1812. Tecumseh was the leader of an Indian alliance, which included many tribes of the Old Northwest.
So, there is a legend about a curse that was once uttered by the dying Shawnee tribe leader Tecumseh over whites breaking a treaty. The curse entails that every American president elected in a year that divides evenly by 20 will die or be killed before the end of their presidential term.
It all started with William Henry Harrison, elected president in 1840, who died a month after his inauguration. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, re-elected in 1864, and fatally shot in the head in a theater a year later. James Garfield was elected in 1880, only to be murdered the following year. Twenty years later, in 1900, William McKinley was elected and was killed by the bullet of anarchist Czolgosz. Another twenty years later, in 1920, Harding takes office and dies in 1923. Then, in 1940 Franklin Roosevelt goes for a third term. You get the picture. Following the pattern, in 1960, John Kennedy becomes president, and in November 1963 he is killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.
One might think presidents just often die, and it just happens to be on years divisible by 20. Since the foundation of the country the only exception was the 12th president, Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850, a year after taking office. The rest died “on schedule”.
Ronald Reagan was the first to break this pattern, elected in 1980, surviving an assassination attempt in 1981. Reagan’s wound, a punctured lung, would have been fatal in the mid-19th century. Later, George W. Bush, elected in 2000, also fell out of the pattern when a grenade was thrown at him in Georgia, but — he survived.
And now it’s 2020. And Joe Biden becomes president. Now do you understand why there’s so much concern and anxiety about his advanced age?
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 