The Curse of Tecumseh

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who started it all. Maybe.

According to legend, presidents elected during years ending in zero will die in office. This did happen to a long string of American presidents who were elected in zero years, so it was widely attributed to the Curse of Tecumseh. This Curse has its roots in the Battle of Tippecanoe, which took place in Indiana in 1811. American forces were led by General William Henry Harrison, who were victorious over the Shawnee people and their allies in the war. The allied peoples rallied together to stop American westward expansion following a shady treaty that Harrison had negotiated with Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee, before the war.

Following the defeat, legend has it that Tecumseh’s brother, popularly known as The Prophet, put a curse on Harrison and all other presidents elected in years ending with the same digit as he was. This seems unlikely, since the war ended in 1811, and Harrison wasn’t elected president until 1840, so how would The Prophet know? Moreover, Harrison put his own health at risk, it’s fair to say. He was 67 during the election of 1840, which made a lot of people nervous about his health. Very much aware of the public’s anxiety over his stamina, Harrison rode on a horse during his inauguration parade, not wearing a coat, even though it was a very cold day. He then proceeded to give the longest inaugural speech to date, speaking from a podium for over an hour to a large crowd. Since the microphone hadn’t been invented yet, giving a speech that could be heard by a crowd of that size made great physical demands on him. He then made a point of dancing all night at his inaugural ball. The next morning, March 5, he woke up with pneumonia, and died 32 days later—the first president to die in office.

Following that, there was a pattern. Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, and was assassinated while in office. James Garfield was elected in 1880, and was assassinated while in office. William McKinley was reelected in 1900, and was assassinated while in office. Warren Harding was elected in 1920, and died of a stroke while in office. Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1940, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage while in office. John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, and was assassinated while in office. By 1980, there was a lot of talk among the superstitious about how the winner of that election would surely die in office. As it happened, Ronald Reagan, who won that year, was shot in 1981, but survived. He wasn’t the first president to survive being shot, either, so it looked like the Curse of Tecumseh didn’t apply anymore. Sure enough, after George W. Bush took office in 2000, he survived to the end of his term. By then, you didn’t hear much talk about the Curse. Anecdotally, I can tell you I knew a guy who told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he really wanted Vice President Cheney to be president, and was counting on the Curse coming true!

Will it happen again in 2020? Probably not. But you can count on the subject coming up again in the next presidential election. That’s one prediction I’m comfortable making.

How the Lemon was Invented

Lemons How do you make a lemon? Silly question, isn’t it? You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right? That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy. Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow. You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true. The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma. (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar . I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.) The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years. The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits. One fruit is the bitter orange, best known in the west for

Origins of the Word Hoser, eh?

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”. It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice. Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes. I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult? Yes… and no. The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult. It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser . Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word. One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game would have to hose down the rink in or

The Whoopie Cap

What can you do with your father’s old hats? If you were born after, say, 1955, the answer is probably “Not much.” Men were still wearing fedoras in the 1970s and 1980s, but by 1990, fashion had turned to the point where unless you were Indiana Jones, the hat didn’t look right. Some blame Jack Kennedy for starting it all, strutting around perfectly coiffed and bare-headed in the early 1960s. In 1953, Harry Truman, a haberdasher by trade, stepped out of office, and just eight years later we had a president who didn’t care for hats? The times, they were a-changin’. If you set the WABAC machine to the 1920s or 1930s (when Indiana Jones was supposed to have lived), you would see the fedora was still very much in style. Men just didn’t leave the house without a hat of some kind, and for what remained of the middle class, the fedora was the topper of choice. But like any other piece of clothing, hats wear out, too. When that happened, you’d just throw it away. Though if there were

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