Dead Presidents #1

I guess that this is ostensibly a baseball blog. I love baseball and enjoyed driving through the eastern part of the state yesterday afternoon while listening to the Red Sox - Giants game on the radio, but the baseball muse hasn't been inspiring me lately, but that's okay.

I got the idea for writing what may turn out to be a new series from Alice Cooper. I was listening to "Nights With Alice Cooper" Friday and he mentioned some presidential trivia. One of the things he mentioned was that Teddy Roosevelt died of a tooth infection. This sparked my interest. I had a nasty one three weeks ago. Good thing I had it treated, no? I went to further research this on Whiskeypedia, but it wasn't mentioned there. However, a further Google search revealed a couple of sites that discuss presidential health and demise.

Today marks the 174th anniversary of the death of James Madison. He was one of the last of the surviving Founding Fathers if not THE last. Most know that Adams and Jefferson died ten years earlier on the Fourth of July. His successor James Monroe also died on the on the Fourth in 1831. According to Dr. Zebra, "...(H)e refused the requests of friends' to take stimulants in order to prolong his life until July 4, the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. . ... Finally, one morning, a few days before the 4th, Madison was found dead in his bedroom, sitting in front of his untouched breakfast tray. " His last words were "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. I always talk better lying down." A niece had asked him what was wrong.

He was buried in the Madison family gravesite at their estate Montpelier in central Virginia.