How many US presidents died in office?
Of the 45 men who have occupied the Oval Office since 1789, a whopping eight have died during their term in office
The first was William Henry Harrison (1841), whose presidency was the shortest in history thanks to his inaugural speech being the longest: he delivered it in the rain and caught pneumonia.
Zachary Taylor (1850) caught lethal cholera from cherries washed in dirty water. Disease also claimed Warren G Harding (1921) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945) with a stroke and cerebral haemorrhage, respectively.
- What play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was shot?
- The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account
The other four: JFK (1963), Abraham Lincoln (1865), William McKinley (1901) and James Garfield (1881) were all killed by an assassin’s bullet, though Garfield technically survived the attack only to catch blood poisoning from his surgeon’s unsterilized scalpel.
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