Roosevelt Dies: Progressive Giant Passes at Sixty
He died in his sleep on January 6, 1919. His son Archie cabled the other brothers: "The old lion is dead." Roosevelt was 60 and had never fully recovered from an Amazon expedition that nearly killed him in 1914 — he contracted malaria and lost 55 pounds. The bullet from the 1912 assassination attempt was still in his chest when he died; surgeons had decided removing it was more dangerous than leaving it. He'd been the youngest president in American history. He outlived that record by fourteen years.
January 6, 1919
107 years ago
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