{"id":5291,"date":"2014-11-24T11:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T17:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5291"},"modified":"2025-03-23T18:57:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T23:57:22","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-november-24-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5291","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for November 24, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Today’s Undiagnosed\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Born on a farm in Ohio, President Warren G. Harding purchased a struggling local newspaper soon after graduating from college and turned it around financially. He then steadily moved up the political ranks, serving as an Ohio state senator for four years, as lieutenant governor for two years and as a U.S. senator for six years. Only a failed campaign for governor in 1910 marred his resume. As luck would have it, the delegates to the 1920 Republican National Convention deadlocked during the presidential nominee balloting and therefore turned to Harding as a compromise candidate. Promising a \u201creturn to normalcy,\u201d he went on to win the general election against Democratic opponent James M. Cox in a landslide, garnering about 60 percent of the popular vote and 404 of 531 electoral votes.<\/p>\n

As president, Harding signed bills that reduced taxes for both individuals and corporations, set high protective tariffs, created a federal budget system and limited immigration, particularly from southern and eastern Europe. He also hosted a disarmament conference, at which the world\u2019s largest naval powers agreed to reduce their arsenal of warships. It is for wrongdoing, however, that Harding\u2019s administration is best remembered. During his time in office, several prominent officials took bribes, including his interior secretary, who granted favorable leases to oil companies in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal, and his Veterans Bureau director, who, among other things, sold government hospital supplies at artificially low prices. \u201cI can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends \u2026 they\u2019re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights,\u201d Harding reportedly complained to a journalist. Harding himself was never personally implicated in these affairs, but he faced his own allegations of drinking alcohol in the White House during Prohibition and of extramarital affairs. A woman 31 years younger even claimed to be the mother of his only biological child.<\/p>\n

In early 1923, just before the first whiff of scandal began hovering, Harding came down with the flu. He also apparently had trouble sleeping. Nonetheless, he decided to go ahead with his so-called Voyage of Understanding, aimed, perhaps with a second term in mind, at explaining his policies and getting a feel for the pulse of the nation. Some observers along the route later claimed that Harding looked tired, and a journalist described him as having swollen lips and puffed eyes. But his personal physician, Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, a close friend of the Hardings who practiced homeopathy, remarked that the president was \u201cfeeling fit and in splendid physical trim.\u201d<\/p>\n

While in Alaska, Harding toured a number of coastal towns and traveled by train as far north as Fairbanks. He then sailed back down to Vancouver, Canada, where he gave a speech to some 40,000 people at Stanley Park. He also tried to play a round of golf but only had the strength for a few holes. The next day, July 27, the Henderson collided with another ship in a heavy fog. More ominous signs came later that day, when, as he delivered a speech to over 60,000 people at the University of Washington, Harding referred to Alaska as \u201cNebraska,\u201d dropped his manuscript and grasped the podium to keep his balance. Following an appearance at the Seattle Press Club, he went to bed early complaining of upper abdominal pain.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sawyer attributed the illness to bad seafood and began administrating laxatives. But another White House physician, Dr. Joel T. Boone, believed that Harding had an enlarged heart. As a result, Boone helped arrange to have Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, the president of both Stanford University and the American Medical Association, and Dr. Charles Cooper, a leading cardiologist, meet them in San Francisco. When the train arrived there on July 29, Harding declined the offer of a wheelchair and walked to a waiting limo, which whisked him to the Palace Hotel in the city\u2019s Financial District. The next day he had a fever of 102 and was diagnosed with pneumonia, prompting the remainder of his California appearances to be canceled. This was followed, however, by a slight recovery. On August 1, his temperature was back to normal, his lungs were clearing up and he was capable of sitting up in bed, reading and eating solid food.<\/p>\n

At around 7:30 p.m. a day later, Harding abruptly died in bed, supposedly as his wife read to him a flattering article about himself. Accounts differ as to who was in the room at the time and the exact sequence of events. Sawyer, still discounting his colleagues\u2019 theories about heart problems, believed the cause of death to be a cerebral hemorrhage. Though the other four doctors on hand signed a joint bulletin with Sawyer, which said the \u201cdeath was apparently due to some brain evolvement, probably an apoplexy,\u201d they later backed away somewhat from this assessment. Today, nearly all experts place the blame on congestive heart failure. Harding may, in fact, have suffered a series of undiagnosed heart attacks going back months.<\/p>\n

The last known photography of Warren G. Harding:
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Culled from: History.Com<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Taphophilia!<\/h3>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Sunny <\/strong>recommends you stop and visit Laurel Grove Cemetery the next time you’re in Savannah. \u00a0I can’t believe I haven’t been to this one before?<\/p>\n

“I highly recommend going to Laurel Grove. It’s awesome, and it’s huge! It would take all day to see the whole thing, but sadly I was only there about an hour before I had to leave.”<\/p>\n

Laurel Grove Cemetery<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Morbid Sightseeing!<\/h3>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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\nWay back in 2003, I drove to Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia to see some slave graves I had read about. \u00a0The grave markers consisted of chains which supposedly represented the life of the slave (one link = born in slavery, lived and died free; two links = born and lived for a time as a slave, but died free; three links = born a slave and died a slave).Diane <\/strong>wrote me about the travelogue and added her own insights:
\n“I just spent a short amount of time at the cemetery.\u00a0 I am particularly interested in the black area of the cemetery. \u00a0It was in very poor condition, unlike the lovely white area.\u00a0 I Noticed that when the grass is cut in the black area, large clumps of dead grass are laying everywhere.\u00a0 Many of the graves are overgrown with weeds there and the concrete slabs look like they have been run over with lawnmowers, crushing them.\u00a0 They will not be lasting long with that type of treatment.”It was very disheartening that the white politicians are still being celebrated.\u00a0 And all of the slave that broke their backs doing free labor under horrible conditions are still being dismissed.\u00a0 I am white and I am doing some genealogical research for several black families, many of whom, especially from the South, are ashamed and still \u00a0devastated from the aftermath of pain their ancestors had to endure.<\/p>\n

“I think these slaves should be acknowledged and celebrated for the heros that they really are.\u00a0 I plan to do some writing about this to raise awareness in both the white and black communities about this issue.\u00a0 I know that the older white establishment would be resistant to it.\u00a0 But the younger people need to be educated.”<\/p>\n

If you’d like to read my full travelogue again, here it is at The Morbid Sightseer:
\nTrudging Up Memory Hill<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Undiagnosed\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Born on a farm in Ohio, President Warren G. Harding purchased a struggling local newspaper soon after graduating from college and turned it around financially. He then steadily moved up the political ranks, serving as an Ohio state senator for four years, as lieutenant governor for two years and as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-sightseer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14046,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291\/revisions\/14046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}