Minutes before giving a speech on a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in an assassination attempt.
The would-be assassin’s bullet is slowed down after travelling through a steel eyeglass case and the folded, fifty page speech he intended to give, stopping in his chest. Realizing that he wasn’t coughing up blood, Roosevelt figured he was well enough to go ahead and deliver his speech rather than rush to the hospital.
He spoke for the next 90 minutes, opening with the words:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Doctors deemed it too risky to remove the bullet, and Roosevelt carried it with him inside his body for the rest of his life.
October 14, 1912 - 99 years ago today.
