Beyond the resigned Richard Nixon – the ninth and last – eight American Heads of State who have over time had to be replaced by their respective Deputies, having died in office. (Almost always – if we exclude Abraham Lincoln and although poor Andrew Johnson was not the plague – by a successor of at least good, if not excellent, ability, thus proving Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen right, who, looking at events across the Atlantic, had in his time already come to affirm that “there is a particular Divine Providence that works in favor of children, drunks, madmen and the United States of America”). Well, seven of them (the excluded one is Zachary Taylor, even though he passed away in 1850: there was no vote for the White House, but whatever) have been electorally ‘linked’ with a ‘year zero’ (that is, with zero as the final number), which has led not a few observers to hypothesize a serious ‘Curse’ cast on the occupants of the White House (by a Red Indian Chief, Tecumseh or by his sorcerer brother, following a defeat, it was said and repeated). And let it be true.
William Harrisonthe first President to die (of natural causes), had been elected in 1840.
The already mentioned Abraham Lincoln – we know well, assassinated – had won the first time, in 1860.
James Garfield – killed – had arrived in Washington prevailing in 1880.
William McKinley – third out – had obtained the second term in 1900.
Warren Harding – after Harrison (and indeed the overlooked Taylor), the second dead of course – had won in 1920.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt – the third non-assassinated in the deadly sequence – among the four elections counted that of 1940.
The presidential “targets” that escaped are in order:
Mauro of the Raffo Gate
Honorary President of the Italy-USA Foundation
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