Random Facts About How All the Departed US Presidents Have Died (39 items)

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  (#34) John F. Kennedy

  • Dec. at 46 (1917-1963)

   John F. Kennedy died at age 46 from a gunshot fired by communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, TX. To this day, there is disagreement as to whether Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, with a substantial portion of the public still believing that Oswald did not act alone. 
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  (#16) Abraham Lincoln

  • Dec. at 56 (1809-1865)

  Abraham Lincoln died at age 56 from a gunshot fired by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, on April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C. He was the first president to be assassinated. Lincoln was one month into his second term and the Civil War was winding down. Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, was displeased with the war’s outcome.
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  (#21) Chester A. Arthur

  • Dec. at 57 (1829-1886)

   Chester A. Arthur died at age 57 after a stroke on November 18, 1886, in New York City. He survived only about a year and a half after finishing out the presidency in 1885. Two days prior to his death, Arthur ordered that all of his personal and official papers be burned. 
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  (#26) William Howard Taft

  • Dec. at 73 (1857-1930)

  William Howard Taft died of heart disease on March 8, 1930, in Washington, D.C., at age 72. After his 1912 election defeat, Taft was appointed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1921, a position he held until his death. While he was slowly losing his faculties during the last years of his life, he extracted a promise from President Herbert Hoover to nominate Charles Evans Hughes, then a judge on the Court of International Justice, as his successor.  
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  (#23) Benjamin Harrison

  • Dec. at 68 (1833-1901)

  Benjamin Harrison died of pneumonia on March 13, 1901, in Indianapolis, IN, at age 67. A few years before that, though, he married a 37-year-old woman (his dead wife's niece, to be exact) at age 62. His two children, aged 41 and 38, did not approve of the marriage.
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  (#10) John Tyler

  • Dec. at 72 (1790-1862)

  John Tyler died of a stroke in Richmond, VA, at age 71 on January 18, 1862. After finishing out William Henry Harrison's presidential term, Tyler tried to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1844, but the party chose James K. Polk instead. At the time of his death, he opposed efforts to outlaw slavery and became the only president to have a Confederate flag draped on his coffin. Because of his allegiance to the Confederacy, he remains the only former president whose death was not recognized by Washington. To this day, the most memorable thing about him is the nickname he earned after assuming the presidency in the wake of Harrison's death: "His Accidency."

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