20 Year USA Presidential Curse

The alleged curse known as 20 Year USA Presidential Curse (more properly Curse of Tippecanoe also known as Tecumseh's Curse or the 20 Year Presidential Curse) is a supposed pattern of death in office of Presidents of the United States elected in years that are divisible by 20, from William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840) through John F. Kennedy (1960). Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and was wounded by gunshot, but he survived. George W. Bush (2000) survived his terms in office, despite an assassination attempt (but some guessed that the "real president" should had been Albert Gore .
==The Curse==
William Henry Harrison was elected president in 1840, but he died in 1841, just a month after being sworn in. Ripley's claimed to note a pattern in 1931 and again in 1948,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 claiming that a president elected in a year ending in zero would die in office. 
=== Curse of Tippecanoe ===
They termed it the Curse of Tippecanoe. The name is derived from the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, when Harrison negotiated the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne, in which the Indians ceded large tracts of land to the government.The New Big Book Of U.S. Presidents By Todd Davis, Marc Frey The treaty further angered Shawnee leader Tecumseh and brought government soldiers and Indians to the brink of war in a period known as Tecumseh's War. Tecumseh and his brother organized a group of Indian tribes to resist the westward expansion of the United States.
In 1811, Tecumseh's forces attacked Harrison's army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, earning Harrison fame and the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". In an account of the aftermath of the battle, Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa supposedly set a curse against Harrison. This is the basis of the curse legend, even though it was Richard Mentor Johnson who was said to be the man who killed Tecumseh.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
==Media mentions==
Strange as it Seems by John Hix ran a cartoon prior to Election Day 1940 entitled "Curse over the White House!" and claiming that "In the last 100 years, Every U.S. President Elected at 20-Year Intervals Has Died In Office!"Oakland Tribune, November 5, 1940, p12
==Exceptions==
Since 1963, no President has died in office, even when elected on twenty-year marks.
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.Presidential Prophecies, History Channel 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.The Sunday Intelligencer (Doylestown, PA), April 5, 1981, p 8 Reagan, the oldest man to be elected President at that time, 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. However, the Reagans' son, Ron Reagan, revealed in his memoir that that Pres. Reagan began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s as early as three years into his first term as president.My Father at 100: A Memoir (Penguin) 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 president elected in 2000, George Walker Bush, also survived two terms in office, which included fainting from choking on a pretzel in 2002, and a 2005 assassination attempt by Vladimir Arutyunian in which a live grenade was thrown at Bush and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili but failed to explode. He completed his final term in office 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 	Typhoid 	Apr 4, 1841
1860 	 	Abraham Lincoln 	Second 	First 	Assassinated 	Apr 15, 1865
1880 	 	James A. Garfield 	First 	First 	AssassinatedFacts About The Presidents by Joseph Nathan Kane	Sep 19, 1881
1900 	 	William McKinley 	Second 	Second 	Assassinated 	Sep 14, 1901
1920 	 	Warren G. Harding 	First 	First 	Heart attack 	Aug 2, 1923
1940 	 	Franklin D. Roosevelt 	Fourth 	Third 	Cerebral hemorrhage 	Apr 12, 1945
1960 	 	John F. Kennedy 	First 	First 	Assassinated 	Nov 22, 1963
1980 	 	Ronald Reagan 	 	First 	Assassination attempt 	Jun 5, 2004(Did not die in office)
2000 	 	George W. Bush 	 	First 	Assassination attempt 	Living
== See also ==
* 
* 
* Similar curses and regularities:
** Bald–hairy, a regularity observed in the sequence of Russian rulers since 1825.
** 
** 
** 
==References==
==External links==
* The Curse of Tecumseh on Snopes.com
*The Mortal Presidency: Film and Documentary Shapell Manuscript Foundation
* Breaking Tecumseh's Curse
== Sources ==
* 
Category:Curses
Category:United States presidential history
Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt
Category:Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Category:Assassination of James A. Garfield
Category:Assassination of William McKinley
Category:Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Category:United States Presidents and death