On this day, Sept. 14, in 1901 President McKinley died from wounds caused by an assassin’s bullet that went through his stomach and lodged in his back eight days earlier.
McKinley’s death was followed by the elevation of then Vice President Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency.
McKinley was in Buffalo, N.Y., delivering a speech on tariffs and foreign trade when he was shot by anarchist Leon Frank Czolgosz. On the second day of McKinley’s visit, Czolgosz approached the president with a revolver hidden in a handkerchief. His first shot grazed McKinley’s shoulder, but the second ripped through the president’s stomach.
Czolgosz was later convicted and executed by electric chair.
– Freeman Klopott
