Will the zero curse stop Biden?

Only one president who died in office was elected in a non-zero year: Zachary Taylor, elected in 1848 and died in 1850. His death remains unexplained, despite an exhumation in 1991 and a modern autopsy. The official explanation is that it cannot be proved he was assassinated by poison, and it cannot be disproved either.

Resuming the chronology, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. On March 30 1981, John Hinckley shot Reagan and the bullet came within three millimetres of his heart and so killing him. (John Hinckley served time as a mental health patient and was released about four decades after the attempted assassination; he now leads a quiet life out of the public eye).

George W Bush was elected in 2000. On September 11 2001 ("9/11"), one of the four hi-jacked planes was bound for Washington DC, perhaps targeted at the White House. Passengers fought the terrorists, and the plane was crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing all onboard. (Bush himself was not at home – he was at a school in Florida).

When Joe Biden was elected in 2000 there were concerns about his health and potential longevity. He was aged 78, the oldest person ever elected as president.

Biden is currently standing again in November 2024. He seems (from the opinion polls) to have a good chance of being re-elected, not because there is any great enthusiasm for him, but he is currently seen as the better alternative to the presumed Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

The zero year phenomenon is called "Tecumseh's Curse" or the "Curse of Tippecanoe". It allegedly began in 1811, when then Governor William Henry Harrison beat the Shawnee Indigenous leader Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana Territory.

A curse was said to be placed on all US presidents elected at the beginning of each new decade. This is probably a folk tale because there is no contemporary evidence of it.

But the "curse" has exerted a strong memory in American politics.

The first victim to be elected in a zero year after the curse was supposedly imposed, was Harrison himself. He delivered one of the US's longest inaugural addresses in appalling weather. He died from pneumonia 30 days after the 1841 inauguration.

Some Americans are aware of the curse. Lincoln's beloved stepmother, for example, predicted his fate just before he was inaugurated and pleaded with him not to become president.

Leaping ahead to the Biden situation, one advantage that he has is the great improvement in medical science. It certainly saved Reagan's life. If Reagan had been shot decades earlier, he would have died.

Given the prominence of a president, each president to die in office had his final hours minutely recorded. All of the victims who were shot, have graphic descriptions of surgeons trying to extract bullets from their bodies. (Kennedy's moment of fatal injury, with the top of his head being blown off, is even captured on a colour home movie). Modern readers are aghast at the brutality and unhealthy conditions of bullet extraction. Reagan was saved by the application of modern medical methods.