9/1 blog: William Henry Harrison

[Robert K S]

As soon as I saw Harrison's name in the first of the two "favorite" clues given by Ken's interviewee Steven de Ceuster, I was ready to buzz in with Harrison's famous nickname. But was this battle not fought on the 7th? (The clue gives the date of the 8th.) Is my answer way off base, or is the clue?

In addition, I've never heard that the 20-year presidential curse was originated with "The Shawnee Prophet" Tenskwatawa before. Is it true?

BTW, the flood of media articles about Brainiac (and that "other" book about Jeopardy! also coming out soon) are starting to his the airwaves, print pages, tubes series. In particular you can find Rachel Aviv's article on the Village Voice web site today.

[WendellWit]

Link to the Village Voice article, which really fails in explaining the hoe/rake incident.

[Ken Jennings]

As soon as I saw Harrison's name in the first of the two "favorite" clues given by Ken's interviewee Steven de Ceuster, I was ready to buzz in with Harrison's famous nickname. But was this battle not fought on the 7th? (The clue gives the date of the 8th.) Is my answer way off base, or is the clue?

In addition, I've never heard that the 20-year presidential curse was originated with "The Shawnee Prophet" Tenskwatawa before. Is it true?

BTW, the flood of media articles about Brainiac (and that "other" book about Jeopardy! also coming out soon) are starting to his the airwaves, print pages, tubes series. In particular you can find Rachel Aviv's article on the Village Voice web site today.

As far as I know, there's no documentation for the so-called curse.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/curse.asp

[Granny O'Doul]

In any case, the curse obviously failed with FDR. It doesn't count if he dies in a subsequent term, or he could have been re-elected eight more times and as long as he died while still in office the claim of the curse could just as well be made.