A former Republican president making a bid to return to the White Home is shot whereas campaigning — and survives.

However that assassination try occurred in Milwaukee in 1912.

And, if it hadn’t been for a duplicate of a long-winded speech and a spectacle case, it is likely to be greater than a footnote to historical past.

On Oct. 14, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was making a run for the White Home because the candidate for the Progressive Get together, after failing to get the Republican Get together’s nomination. He got here to Milwaukee to talk to a packed Milwaukee Auditorium (now Miller Excessive Life Theatre).

On his manner out of the Gilpatrick Lodge (now the location of the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee), Roosevelt was shot by a disgruntled New Yorker named John Schrank, who had been stalking the previous president to cease him from getting a 3rd time period.

The bullet hit Roosevelt within the chest, but it surely was slowed by the contents of his pocket: a metallic spectacles case and a duplicate of his very-long speech. (The Hyatt has a show marking the occasion in its entrance off King Drive.)

Roosevelt managed to make his speech and, in a little bit of bravado, used his bloodied shirt and tattered speech as a logo of his resilience.

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As Gerard Helferich recounts in his historical past of the incident, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Murderer” (Lyons Press), the taking pictures occurred in Milwaukee, however solely as a result of Schrank had bungled a number of earlier makes an attempt as he adopted Roosevelt across the nation.

Schrank was dominated insane after he pleaded responsible to the taking pictures. (He had instructed anybody who would hear that his chief inspiration was a dream by which President William McKinley, assassinated in 1901 and succeeded by Roosevelt, instructed him that Roosevelt was behind his homicide.)

However whereas Schrank shared the priority of a variety of People a couple of president serving a 3rd time period — breaking the precedent set down by George Washington — investigators did not tie the shooter to any bigger conspiracy.

Schrank spent the remainder of his life — 31 years — in Wisconsin psychological prisons. In accordance with Helferich, he did not have a single customer in all that point, and died in obscurity.