McKinley’s Assassination
President William McKinley was shot twice in his abdomen by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6th, 1901. The event occurred at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. Ironically, the president’s secretary successfully convinced him not to go ahead with the trip on two separate occasions since he worried about this exact event. McKinley died 8 days after the shooting.
Grover Cleveland – 144
With an IQ of 144, Grover Cleveland was very close to making it to the top 50% of presidents. Grover Cleveland served two terms as the president and his first term ran from 1885 until 1889. He, however, did not serve consecutive terms as he lost his first bid for reelection but later won again in 1893. Conservatives admired his fiscal policy and his desire for political reform. During his second term, Cleveland dealt with the Panic of 1893, which ended up becoming such a big economic crisis, as well as the Pullman Strike of 1894, a massive railroad strike on the national level. He was a descendant of one of the families who first moved from Europe to the new world as his forefathers arrived in Massachusetts. His biographer praised Cleveland and his public speaking skills: “He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not”. Despite his less popular second term, some consider Cleveland to be one of the best presidents the country ever had.