Writing for Quartz, reporter Steve Friess noted that President Barack Obama’s continued existence Wednesday marked “a major historical milestone.” According to Friess, it has now been more than 18,967 days (nearly 52 years) since a United States president died in office — the longest period of presidential survival since 1841.
(For those who haven’t been keeping count, that was the year William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia. Before his death, no U.S. president had died in office.)
The relatively safe nature of the job now is because of increased security and advancements in medicine. Since John F. Kennedy’s death in November 1963, there have been shots fired at presidents three times — two directed at Gerald Ford, who was uninjured, and another aimed at Ronald Reagan, who was wounded. A number of presidential deaths likely could have been prevented with better medical care, with the prime example of James Garfield succumbing to a bullet wound in the back after Dr. Willard Bliss violated the standards even of 1881 by inserting his bare finger into Garfield’s wound, introducing infection.
