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- <text id=91TT1436>
- <title>
- July 01, 1991: American Notes:Presidents
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 01, 1991 Cocaine Inc.
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 27
- American Notes
- PRESIDENTS
- Tales from the Crypt
- </hdr><body>
- <p> The first U.S. President to be assassinated was Abraham
- Lincoln -- or was it Zachary Taylor? Last week the coroner in
- Louisville exhumed the body of the 12th President, who died on
- July 9, 1850, five days after consuming a large amount of iced
- cherries and milk at a sweltering Independence Day celebration
- at the Washington Monument. Back then, Taylor's sudden death was
- attributed to gastroenteritis. But Clara Rising, a Florida
- writer who is researching a book about Taylor, believes he may
- have been murdered.
- </p>
- <p> Samples of Taylor's hair, bones and fingernails will be
- tested for traces of arsenic poisoning. If any are found, they
- would strengthen Rising's theory that Taylor was killed by
- proslavery Southerners angered by his support for the admission
- of California and New Mexico into the Union as free states. Said
- Dabney Taylor, the President's great-great-great grandson:
- "Rumors have been running through the family for years. I'm just
- glad somebody is finally going to do something about it." The
- prime suspects: Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, Vice President
- Millard Fillmore and two unnamed Georgia politicians.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-