The Zero Factor

Who can forget the US’s Zero Factor?  It gives a chilling effect stating that no US President elected in a year ending in zero left the White House alive. 

It started in 1940 when Henry Harrison caught a cold that drastically developed into pneumonia that eventually led to his untimely death only a month after his inauguration.

1860 was Abraham Lincoln’s year.  I guess we all know already how he died.  He was shot at a theater in Washington.  1880 was for James Garfield.  He was also shot by a guy named Guiteau.  He hardly reached six (6) months in office when he died.  William Mckinley came to office in 1900. He too suffered that brutal fate when he was shot by an anarchist at an exposition in New York. 

US’s 1920 President, Warren Harding also died at a speaking engagement tour in the West.  Speculations about the cause of his illness and death are still unknown up to now.

The US President that was re-elected four (4) times, Franklin Theodore Roosevelt, was elected in 1940.  He died in 1945 after collapsing at his work desk at the summer White House.  The next victim would be JFK (John F. Kennedy).  He was elected in 1960.  He was later assassinated. Then both Presidents Thomas Jefferson (1800) and James Monroe (1820) were believed to be the ones who escaped the Zero Factor. 

President Ronald Reagan (1980) survived an assassination attempt and George W. Bush (2000), aside from nearly getting hit by a flying shoe from an irrate Iraqi journalist in Baghdad, have all so far been saved from the “death list”.

Goosebumps? Coincidence?