Today’s post comes from Eric Rhodes, an intern in the National Archives History Office in Washington, DC. Assassins’ bullets have claimed the lives of four United States Presidents, and several other Presidents survived attempts on their lives. It is not widely known, but Harry Truman was the target of such a conspiracy. Thirteen years before … Continue reading The Plot to Kill President Truman
Today in 1881, President Garfield died as the result of being shot at close range by an assassin. It took him nearly three months to die. On July 2, after months of increasing agitation and several aborted attempts to shoot the President with a pearl-handled pistol, Charles Guiteau finally mortally wounded the President as he waited … Continue reading Paging Dr. Bell to the President’s deathbed
It had not yet been 24 hours since President Ronald Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt—wounds far more serious than the public was told at the time. But on the morning of March 31, 1981, the three men he relied on most in these early days of his administration came to see him in … Continue reading A Shaky, but Official, Signature
When Ronald Reagan survived the attempt on his life on March 30, 1981, and went on to serve two full four-year terms, he broke what some people call “the year-ending-in-zero” curse. It goes like this: Every President elected in a year ending in zero since 1840 had died in office. William Henry Harrison, elected in … Continue reading Reverse the (Zero) Curse
