The Zero Curse
 

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.

Now according to the pattern, since Reagan did die of alzheimer's, the curse may pick up again and leave Bush to succumb to it...or maybe prophet Tecumseh is getting a little shady and...well...Bush did choke on a pretzel...


What do you guys think?

Actually, Reagan died of pnemonia.

Patterns can be found in anyhting as long as you ignore everything that doesn't fit your theory.

People were doing the same thing after September 11. The chain letter (and comical response by some guy who became an instant celebrity when his response appeared on Snopes,) can be seen on the Snopes page:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/numbers.htm

Wow, that snopes link was cool.

You could do that theory with anything I suppose. Pretty cool though.

Um, but Reagan died long after leaving office. Of natural causes. At the age of 93. While with his loving wife, after a long and successful career in movies and politics. If that's a curse, I'd like to know exactly what the alternative is.

If you include him in the pattern, all you get is a pattern in which every President elected in a year ending in 0 dies. That isn't a curse, that's life. Every President elected from Washington through Nixon has died. Every President elected at any time, and Gerald Ford, will die.

I wish someone would curse me to the terrible fate of being elected President of the United States in 2044, serving two successful terms with landslide victories, and living another decade in luxurious seclusion with an attractive, loving woman to take care of me in my golden years.

It's a coincidence. The curse has been disproven by Reagan, and soon will be with Bush.

if im not mistaken regan did get shot in office, he lived, but he had an attempt on his life, who knows maybe the we'll have a nuclear war and we all die...

Correlation is not necessarily causation.

Hehe, I love that little fact about George Bush.

If something was to happen to him it would tie in with that other thread crxforum made.

That's what made me think of this.

So... I feel the need to waste time at work.

TRUTH:
1. 1 in 6 terms is a 0 year.
2. All presidents are mortal.
3. The average age of presidents at inaugrateion is 54.81
4. The average age at inauguration of a successor to a president who dies in office is 52.
4. The average life span in 1850 was 47
5. The average life span in 1920 was 65.

Also, all presidents are mammals.

There's Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. Give a mathematician enough time and they can come up with a connection between just about anything. I think what you have here is just statistian at work, it would be interesting to get as a percentage the number of presidents that died in office, and see how it matches up.

Anyone got that info?

Sorry for the crappy text alignment:

U.S. Presidents Who Died in Office
No President Date of Death Cause of Death
1
William Henry Harrison April 4, 1841 Natural Causes
2
Zachary Taylor July 9, 1850 Natural Causes
3
Abraham Lincoln April 14, 1865 Assassinated
4
James A. Garfield September 19, 1881 Assassinated July 2, 1881
5
William McKinley September 14, 1901 Assassinated September 6, 1901
6
Warren Harding August 2, 1923 Natural Causes
7
Franklin D. Roosevelt April 12, 1945 Natural Causes
8
John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963 Assassinated

wishful thinking? :cool:

So it's not "every 20 years", it's "every 20 years, plus or minus 5"?

Yeah, how about no.

like, OMG! Every twenty years we elect a president who eventually dies of varying causes? Call the media!!!

;)