Friday, November 26, 2010

Squail of the Day

Speech and glasses case
on display at TR's birthplace
in New York City.
From Wikipedia: "While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper named John Schrank shot him, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating both his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he wasn't coughing blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes."
X-ray of Roosevelt's chest, showing bullet lodged in rib cage.
"It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose," he said as he began his speech.
Colonel Roosevelt, the long awaited third volume in Edmund Morris's biography of TR (1858-1919) has arrived. If you've read the first two, you'll want to read this one. Love him or hate him, Teddy's life as a cowboy, writer, boxer, environmentalist, Naval historian, mountain climber, ornithologist, Sunday school teacher, soldier, big-game hunter, and President was one death-defying adventure after another.
Read a review by Ken Burns collaborator Geoffrey Ward here.

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