Posted on 10/14/2014 5:44:19 PM PDT by iowamark
On October 14, 1912, an unemployed saloonkeeper shot former president and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt outside a Milwaukee hotel. Rather than being rushed to the hospital, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his scheduled 90-minute speech. By slowing the bullet, those lengthy prepared remarks may actually have saved his life.
Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them...
Only two days before, the editor-in-chief of The Outlook characterized Roosevelt as “an electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” and for the next 90 minutes the 53-year-old former president proved it. “I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap,” he claimed. Few could doubt him. Although his voice weakened and his breath shortened, Roosevelt glared at his nervous aides whenever they begged him to stop speaking or positioned themselves around the podium to catch him if he collapsed. Only with the speech completed did he agree to visit the hospital...
Doctors determined it was safer to leave the bullet embedded deep in Roosevelt’s chest than to operate, although the shooting exacerbated his chronic rheumatoid arthritis for the rest of his life...
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
“Well except for the fact that he believed there should be no private property ownership.”
Other than his, of course.
Brave man.
But I wish he had shut up.
LOL!
Roosevelt, a bit like Putin of his time. Strange how progressives in America have become so effeminate after that.
bttt
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