The Curse of Tippecanoe is an urban legend about the deaths in office of presidents of the

The Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's Curse, the 20-year Curse or the Zero Curse) is an urban legend about the deaths in office of presidents of the United States who were elected in years that end with the digit 0, which all are divisible by 20.Show more

The presidents elected on such years from 1840 to 1960 died in office: William Henry Harrison (1840), Abraham Lincoln (1860), James A. Garfield (1880), William McKinley (1900), Warren G. Harding (1920), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940) and John F. Kennedy (1960). These are seven of the eight total presidents who have died in office. Since 1960, the three presidents who were elected on applicable years have not died in office. Ronald Reagan (1980) and George W. Bush (2000) survived their terms in office, though Reagan was shot in 1981 and Bush choked on a pretzel in 2002. Joe Biden (2020) is the current president and the latest to be elected in a year fitting the pattern.

The phenomenon's name references Harrison's pre-presidential military expeditions, in which he defeated Native American tribes led by Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Rumor has it that he was cursed by Tenskwatawa. The purported curse has been criticized as a coincidental pattern, and a 2009 survey of professional historians found no interest in or insight into the curse.

HISTORY
Thomas Jefferson (1800) and James Monroe (1820) preceded the supposed curse and outlived their presidencies by 17 and 6 years, respectively. Neither of them was ever targeted by an assassin. However, there is a curious coincidence that both men died on the Fourth of July.

William Henry Harrison was elected president in 1840 and died in 1841, just a month after being sworn in. In Tecumseh's War, Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his younger brother Tenskwatawa organized a confederation of Indian tribes to resist the westward expansion of the United States. In the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison defeated Tenskwatawa and his troops, acting as the governor of the Indiana Territory. Harrison thus earned the moniker "Old Tippecanoe".

In 1931 and 1948, the trivia book series Ripley's Believe It or Not! noted the pattern and termed it the "Curse of Tippecanoe". Strange as It Seems by John Hix ran a cartoon prior to the election of 1940 titled "Curse over the White House!" and claimed that "In the last 100 years, Every U.S. President Elected at 20-Year Intervals Has Died In Office!" In February 1960, journalist Ed Koterba noted that "The next President of the United States will face an eerie curse that for more than a century has hung over every chief executive elected in a year ending with zero." Both of their hints at the elected president's death came true, with Roosevelt's death in 1945 and Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

The first written account to refer to the source of the curse was an article by Lloyd Shearer in 1980 in Parade magazine. It is claimed[by whom?] that when Tecumseh was killed in a later battle, Tenskwatawa set a curse against Harrison.

Running for re-election in 1980, President Jimmy Carter was asked about the curse at a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio, on October 2 of that year while taking questions from the crowd. A high school student asked Carter if he was concerned about "predictions that every 20 years or election years ending in zero, the President dies in office." Carter replied, "I've seen those predictions. [...] I'm not afraid. If I knew it was going to happen, I would go ahead and be President and do the best I could till the last day I could."

Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, no president has died in office. Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded severely two months after his 1981 inauguration. Days after Reagan survived the shooting, columnist Jack...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Tippecanoe

TAGS: Curse of Tippecanoe, United States presidents and death, Tecumseh, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of William McKinley, Assassination of James A. Garfield, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, William Henry Harrison, Presidency of William Henry Harrison, United States presidential history, Presidential elections in the United States, Curses

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