Just some related info. The legendary Shawnee chief Cornstalk (whom I might be distantly related) is said to have placed a curse on Point Pleasant West Virginia with his dieing breath when he and his son were murdered by settlers. The region is said to have bad luck, and all sorts of goings on.
Prolly just a statistical blip, but worth noting. IE there’s also prolly cursed regions with really good luck, but who notices that?
oops forgot the column link
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_082.html
Here’s a version of the tail btw, meant more as a ghost story, but these things prolly aren’t much else anyway.
Let me put it this way:
On the afternoon of Novembetr 22, 1963, after the news of Kennedy’s assassination had spread across the country, my freshman English teacher at Lawndale High (CA) produced an essay written by one of her students about a year before. It began something like this:
“If a certain historical pattern is followedd, John F. Kennedy will not live out his term in office.”
Then the essay detailed the beginning of the curse, as it fell on William Henry Harrison, elected in 1840. (I have noticed that no account of this curse mentions Zachary Taylor, the second President to die in office, in July 1850.)
I saw some tabloids’ headlines even before the 1980 Presidential election: “Assassins Poised to Slay New President.” This became significant, of course, when Hinckley did what he did.
And yet Dubya is still with us. If he lives for two more years, the curse must be gone.
Reagan lasted well over a decade after he left office, so the “curse” is pretty well shot already.
–Cliffy
Reagen did survive a very serious assasscination attempt. The “curse” was put on before modern medicine.
What I wonder about this alleged curse… Say I’m Tecumseh, dying on the battlefield at the hands of the white man. I can see cursing my foes with my dying breath. I could maybe see something like “May your chiefs be cursed with afflictions”. Or maybe something more specific, like “May your great chief die an early death, and may the chief after him, and so for seven chiefs more”. But there’s no way I’m going to say “May all of your chiefs brought to power in a year that, by your calendar, ends in zero, die or come really close to dying before he leaves power”.
I remember on Reagan’s last day in office, several hours after Bush the Wiser had been sworn in, one of the network TV anchormen (I think it was Peter Jennings) saying something to the effect of, “I didn’t want to say anything before Mr. Reagan was safely out of office, but it appears that the twenty-year curse against U.S. presidents is now truly broken…”
I consider it irresistible to wonder whether such “curse” hasn’t been transferred to the electorate: that they got what they deserved when Ronnie and Bush II were elected…
But that would require a curse transfer form and god knows the fines and paperwork that would entail…
That and, where are you going to get a manticore eye in this day and age?
“Manticore eye”? 
Not thrilled with BII (tho I’d still pick him against the Demo options we had) but I would gladly take a Ronnie-esque curse in perpetuum. (Hijack off)
Ronald Reagan broke the “curse.” He did not die in office. It matters not that he would have died in office had he been shot 80 years earlier.
The statistical anomoly has ended; it’s now a less interesting anomoly, though still quite unusual. Compare the number of presidents to died in office who were NOT elected in a year ending in 0…
Yep. IIRC, Reagan did in fact die on the table but was brought back.
You remember incorrectly. While he was seriously wounded, his heart did not stop, nor was there cessation of brain activity reported. See any of the various, credible reports of the surgery done.
Could one count 9-11 as part of the “curse?”
I remember the curse quite well from 1963. I never remember it being called an Indian curse, though. Another spooky parallel was between Kennedy and Lincoln - among other things Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy and Kennedy’s was named Lincoln.
Coincidence is amazing, isn’t it.
And maybe Zach Taylor died from Montezuma’s Curse. 
This “Reagan” you recall… did he do a “Puttin’ on the Ritz” duet at his first public appearance? Because that was a different fellow… also tall, also had a limited recall of the Iran-Contra deals, but a different fellow…
“Curses!” fumed the Pretzel Gnome.
That’s mostly an urban legend, given new life by email; Snopes has a piece on it. Kennedy did have a secretary named Lincoln (Evelyn), but Lincoln’s aides were named Nicolay and Hay.