{"id":1416,"date":"2020-04-26T15:05:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/histories-and-mysteries\/the-death-of-president-harrison.html"},"modified":"2020-04-28T00:32:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T00:32:55","slug":"the-death-of-president-harrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=1416","title":{"rendered":"President Harrison Didn’t Die from Not Wearing a Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When I was in high school, my history teacher told us that William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, died in 1841 from pneumonia because he didn\u2019t wear a hat when he stood in the cold for hours during his inauguration. After that, I wore my woolen stocking cap pulled down over my ears on cold days so I wouldn\u2019t die of pneumonia. It wasn\u2019t until I was in medical school that I realized that not wearing a hat doesn\u2019t kill anyone, unless perhaps it\u2019s a metal helmet that saves you from a fatal bullet in a battle, or a bicycle helmet when you fall off your bike.<\/p>\n

Why President Harrison Didn\u2019t Wear a Hat or Coat<\/strong>
\nWilliam Henry Harrison was a U.S. military officer and politician who died of pneumonia 31 days into his term, to become the first president to die in office. He was 68 years and 23 days old, and at that time, the average life expectancy for a man was only 38 years. He was the oldest person to be elected president until 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated at age 69. The current record for the oldest president at inauguration is Donald Trump who, on January 20, 2017, was inaugurated at age 70 years and 220 days.<\/p>\n

To win the election, Harrison had to give voters the impression that he was fit, able and vigorous enough to be president. He believed that he had lost the previous presidential election because voters thought that he was too old to become president, so this time his entire campaign strategy ignored current issues and was based on “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” the fact that as a vigorous soldier 25 years earlier he had defeated the Shawnee Indian chief, Tecumseh, at Tippecanoe. At his inauguration, in temperatures in the low thirties with intermittent rain, he displayed his youthful appearance by not wearing a hat to let the long hair of his wig hang down on his shoulders, and not wearing a coat to display his slim athletic figure with no obvious belly fat. After that, he rode on horseback to the ceremony rather than in the closed carriage, and it took him more than two hours to give the longest inaugural address ever of 8,445 words. It would have been much longer if his friend, Daniel Webster, had not shortened it considerably. Then he rode in the inaugural parade for more than an hour and went to three inaugural celebrations that took him through most of the night.
\n