1912 – Former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot and mildly wounded by John Flammang Schrank in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Roosevelt delivers his scheduled speech. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Previously serving for six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. He was 42 years old upon his first inauguration, making him the youngest person to hold the office. A sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt overcame health problems through a regime of vigorous exercise, which he called "the strenuous life". He was homeschooled and began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard University. After the simultaneous deaths of his first wife Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt and mother Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, he recuperated by buying and operating a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. Roosevelt served as the assistant secretary of the Navy under McKinley, and in 1898 helped plan the successful naval war against Spain. He resigned to help form and lead the Rough Riders, a unit that fought the Spanish Army in Cuba to great publicity. Returning a war hero, Roosevelt was elected New York's governor in 1898. Because the New York state party leadership disliked his ambitious state agenda, they convinced McKinley to choose him as his running mate in the 1900 presidential election. The McKinley–Roosevelt ticket won a landslide victory. As a leader of the progressive movement, Roosevelt championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies after taking over as president, which called for fairness for all citizens, breaking corporate trusts, regulating railroads, and pure food and drugs. His pursuit of antitrust litigation in particular earned him the nickname "the Trust Buster". Roosevelt prioritized conservation and established national parks, forests, and monuments to preserve U.S. natural resources. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. He was elected to a full term in 1904 and convinced William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, to succeed him in 1908. Roosevelt grew frustrated with Taft's brand of conservatism yet failed to win the 1912 Republican presidential nomination. He founded the Bull Moose Party and ran in 1912; the split allowed the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. On October 14, 1912, while arriving at a campaign event in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank, who believed the ghost of assassinated president William McKinley had directed him to kill Roosevelt. The bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest after penetrating his eyeglass case and passing through a 50-page folded copy of the speech titled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual". Schrank was disarmed and captured by Roosevelt's stenographer, Elbert E. Martin as he attempted to fire a second time, and might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take Schrank and make sure no violence was done to him. As an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. He declined to go to hospital immediately and instead delivered a 90-minute speech with blood seeping into his shirt. Only afterwards did he accept medical attention. Probes and an x-ray showed the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded it would be less dangerous to leave it than attempt to remove it, and Roosevelt carried the bullet in him for the rest of his life. Polls of historians and political scientists rank him as one of the greatest presidents in American history.
