Dear Cecil,
Not only is “tecumseh’s curse” pretty creepy, so is the flip side:
Of all the presidents NOT elected in a year ending with 0, only one died in office.
That was Zachary Taylor, who died in (of couse!) 1850!
People not dying is creepy now?
The column is Was there an Indian curse that presidents elected in “0” years would die in office?
And since the “curse” did not work for the presidents elected in 1820 (Monroe), 1980 (Reagan) and 2000 (Bush Jr or Gore), it was either selective or non-existent. (Tecumseh died in 1813, so James Monroe should have been included in the curse.)
Astonishingly as this may seem, all of the presidents, up to Jimmy Carter are now dead! Tecumseh’s curse works overtime.
I think the point is that seven presidents elected in years ending in 0 died in office, while 1 president elected in non 0 years died in office. That is attempting to establish that there is some pattern at work. If there were equal numbers of presidents or equal percentages or something of 0 year deaths vs non 0 year deaths, that would be counter to the claim of the curse. Instead, we see a pattern that fits the supposed curse.
And – Reagan only just barely survived. Had he not been treated as quickly and as expertly as he was, he would surely have died.
So curses are treatable now? Medical science marches on…
The curse probably did not kick in until Harrison became president. However, it failed in 1860 and 1940 (it’s ridiculous to count presidents who died only in a later term. By that standard, FDR could have been elected till he was 100 years old and still fallen victim to the “curse”). In fact, there much stronger evidence that Tecumseh bestowed a blessing, as every president since WH Harrison, right up to this day, who was elected in a —0 year remained president either for the rest of his life, or till the end of his constitutional eligibility.
Just for fun, let’s look at it the other way around. Assume that Presidents will die in office and ask what the chances are that they will be elected in a year ending in 0. The final digits for election years cycle through: 8-2-6-0-4.* You would think that meant that the chance of a dead President being elected in a zero year was 1 in 5, but most Presidents serve two terms.
The cycle for election pairs is 8-2, 2-6, 6-0, 0-4, or 4-8, giving Mr. Dead President a 2 in 5 chance of hitting a zero. That’s pretty close to 50/50 for a chance that’s been channelled into a something-in 5 configuration.
Grover Cleveland throws the math off by serving two non-consecutive terms (4-2). (I remember him because of The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band.)
And AppallingGael is right about Roosevelt. He’d been elected to four terms (2-6-0-4) and had his health been better, would have taken a shot at a fifth. Depending on how you set up your assumptions, you could say that he had no chance of either not collecting his 0 as he passed it by or of not dying in office. Really, his chance of not collecting any even digit was completely a question of his health.
Given that it takes decades to develop the support needed to be elected President, and given that the office is a lightning rod for blame, I’m not to surprised that we’ve had Presidents die in office. These are powerful older men who aren’t likely to relinquish that power because of a few warning twinges. Maybe if we ran the scenario a few thousand times, each even digit would get its fair cumulative share. For a single run, the numbers could have been more strongly segregated and still been within the expected probability.
- The cycle can be started with any even digit. I checked George Washington’s first election. Although it was in 1789 (the only odd-numbered election year), that was only because the Constitution was still being ratified in 1788. His second election was in 1792.
I’m not getting this. There are exactly five chances per century for a president to be elected in an year ending in 0. There are 25 elections per century. That’s 1 in 5 no matter what. There have been 11 elections of that type. 7 of the 11 died in office. There have been 43 other elections. 6 of the 43 have died in office. That’s a significant difference.
Seems to me that there was a book on the Third Secret of Fatima. It was not supposed to be about the end of the world. It was supposed to be a prophecy about the attempted assassination of a pope: Pope John Paul II, I believe, who was shot and very seriously wounded. An earlier pope was attacked with a knife, but the attacker screwed up and the knife pretty much went flat against the abdomen.
The Third Secret allegedly said that a pope would be assassinated. It did not say nearly assassinated. The rationalization given by the author was that a prophecy could be about something slated to happen, but there may be an upset toward the final outcome. Also, the nearness to death made it practically a death: The doctors apparently doubted that their efforts would be successful. I’m not inclined to accept such reasoning to defend the supposed “fulfillment” by near-fulfillment, BTW.
I don’t know whether you are making a claim in favor of RR being included in the “curse” or not. I’m just saying that if anyone is, it seems very similar to me.
- AKA True Blue Jack
The Third Secret in English translation is available in its entirety at a Vatican web page, which I think is creditable.
This refers to the attempted assassination in exactly the same way that a quatrain of Nostradamus refers to Hitler.
An apt comparison.
- “Jack”