Curse of Tippecanoe

The name Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's Curse, the Presidential Curse, Zero-Year Curse, the Twenty-Year Curse, or the Twenty-Year Presidential Jinx) is used to describe the regular death in office of Presidents of the United States elected or re-elected in years evenly divisible by twenty, from William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840) through John F. Kennedy (1960). Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was wounded by gunshot but survived; George W. Bush (2000) survived an attempt on his life unharmed.

The curse

The curse, first widely noted in a Ripley's Believe It or Not book published in 1931, began with the death of William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841 after having been elected in 1840. For the next 120 years, presidents elected during years ending in a zero (occurring every twenty years) died while serving in office, from Harrison to John F. Kennedy (elected 1960, died 1963).

The name "Curse of Tippecanoe" derives from the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. As governor of the Indiana Territory, William Harrison used questionable tactics in the negotiation of the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne with Native Americans, in which they ceded large tracts of land to the U.S. government. The treaty further angered the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, and brought government soldiers and Native Americans to the brink of war in a period known as Tecumseh's War. Tecumseh and his brother organized a group of Indian tribes designed to resist the westward expansion of the United States. In 1811, Tecumseh's forces, led by his brother, attacked Harrison's army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, earning Harrison fame and the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". Harrison strengthened his reputation even more by defeating the British at the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812. In an account of the aftermath of the battle, Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, supposedly set a curse against Harrison and future presidents elected during years with the same end number as Harrison. This is the basis of the curse legend.

Media mentions

After the observation by Ripley, talk of the curse resurfaced as the next cursed election year approached. A similar oddities cartoon feature, Strange as it Seems by John Hix, appeared prior to Election Day 1940, with "Curse over the White House!" A list, running from "1840-Harrison" to "1920—Harding" was followed by "1940—??????" and the note that "In the last 100 years, Every U.S. President Elected at 20-Year Intervals Has Died In Office!" Ed Koterba, author of a syndicated column called "Assignment Washington", referred to the subject again in 1960.

As 1980 approached, the curse was sufficiently well-known, and Americans wondered whether the winner of that election would follow the pattern. The Library of Congress conducted a study in the summer of 1980 about the origin of the tale, and concluded that "although the story has been well known for years, there are no documented sources and no published mentions of it". Running for re-election in 1980, President Jimmy Carter was asked about the curse at a campaign stop in Dayton on October 2 of that year. Taking questions from the crowd, Carter replied, "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, for the last day I could."

Exceptions

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not followed by his death in office, despite being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt within months of his (1981) inauguration. Days after Reagan survived the shooting, columnist Jack Anderson wrote "Reagan and the Eerie Zero Factor" and noted that the 40th president had either disproved the superstition, or had nine lives. Reagan, the oldest man to be elected President, also survived treatment for colon cancer while in office. First Lady Nancy Reagan was reported to have hired psychics and astrologers to try to protect her husband from the effects of the curse. Reagan left office on January 20, 1989, and ultimately died of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's Disease on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93.

The next president in the line of the curse, George W. Bush (elected in 2000), was unharmed in three assassination attempts, survived an incidence of fainting after he choked on a pretzel, and finished out his final term on January 20, 2009.

Presidents in the line of the alleged curse

Elected	Picture	President	Term of death	Term of election that was a multiple of 20	Cause of death or attempted assassinations	Date of death
1840		William Henry Harrison	First	First	Pneumonia	Apr 4, 1841
1860		Abraham Lincoln	Second	First	Assassinated	Apr 15, 1865
1880	100px	James A. Garfield	First	First	Assassinated	Sep 19, 1881
1900	100px	William McKinley	Second	Second	Assassinated	Sep 14, 1901
1920		Warren G. Harding	First	First	Uncertain (heart attack or stroke)	Aug 2, 1923
1940	100px	Franklin D. Roosevelt	Fourth	Third	Cerebral hemorrhage	Apr 12, 1945
1960		John F. Kennedy	First	First	Assassinated	Nov 22, 1963
1980		Ronald Reagan	N/A	First	Attempted assassination	Jun 5, 2004 (Did not die in office)
2000		George W. Bush	N/A	First	3 Attempted assassinations, a segway crash and a pretzel choke	Living (Did not die in office)

See also

• List of Presidents of the United States who died in office
• Second-term curse
• Kennedy curse
• List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots
• Bald-hairy, a regularity observed in the sequence of Russian rulers since 1825.

External links

• The Curse of Tecumseh on Snopes.com
• The Mortal Presidency: Film and Documentary Shapell Manuscript Foundation
• Breaking Tecumseh's Curse

• Ripley's Believe it or Not, 2nd Series (Simon & Schuster, 1931); an updated reference is on page 140 of the Pocket Books paperback edition of 1948
• The New Big Book Of U.S. Presidents By Todd Davis, Marc Frey
• Randi Henderson and Tom Nugent, "The Zero Curse: More than just a coincidence?" (reprinted from the Baltimore Sun), November 2, 1980, in Syracuse Herald-American, p C-3
• Oakland Tribune, November 5, 1940, p12
• "Pennsylvania Avenue Ponderings", Hammond Times, February 25, 1960, p18
• Presidential Prophecies, History Channel
• The Sunday Intelligencer (Doylestown, PA), April 5, 1981, p 8
• CNN.com - Bush grenade attacker gets life - January 11, 2006
• http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/us/bush-to-be-monitored-in-wake-of-fainting-episode.html
• Facts About The Presidents by Joseph Nathan Kane