The names of certain presidential assassins will forever live in infamy such as John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Others, like Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz, are a bit more obscure, possibly because they have names that are harder to spell. The most unacknowledged assassin of all, however, is the one that struck down President Zachary Taylor before he'd spent two years in office: cherries and milk.
Yes, this dangerous duo did away with the 12th POTUS in July 1850, paving the way for Millard Fillmore to take office. There are no conspiracy theories here, however. President Taylor's demise may have been a case of food poisoning, although at this late date, it's not certain whether the cherries or milk were to blame.
(The ice cubes used to chill the milk could have also been the culprit.) All we know is that President Taylor consumed both items on July 4 at a ceremony marking the installation of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument and subsequently contracted a fatal illness that triggered severe stomach pains and vomiting. His doctor at the time assumed the cause of death to have been cholera, although other theories have included typhoid, dysentery, or even poisoning.
(An exhumation did find some arsenic in President Taylor's system, but it was not a fatal dose.) At this point, it's probably safe to assume we'll never really know what killed Old Rough and Ready, but we're glad that food safety standards have come a long way since the 1850s. Cherries weren't ev.
