Word: harrisons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Then came William Henry Harrison in the election of 1840. Harvard Professor of History William Gienapp (that's William E. Gienapp) told me he really doesn't know why Harrison chose to use three names, except that it was considered aristocratic--and Harrison was certainly an aristocrat. His dad signed the Declaration of Independence, and Harrison grew up on swanky Berkeley Plantation on the James...
Gienapp says he may have done it, then, because William Harrison was sort of wimpy-sounding. All the presidents before him (except maybe Van Buren) had been famous for something--like starting the United States (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe), starting the first political machine (Van Buren's Albany Regency) or being an Adams (Adams, Adams...
...then Harrison died. After about 10 minutes of being president. (Okay, so it was actually about 750 hours...
...then we had Grover Cleveland, Ben Harrison (who technically didn't need a middle name because his grandfather was president) and William McKinley...
...point I was still halfway rational," he remembers. He got the kids into their tennis shoes, backed the station wagon and the Mercedes sedan out of the garage, put the kids in the cars and left the engines running. At 2 p.m. the fire crested the hill above the Harrison house with a terrible roar and danced down the slope. Joy belatedly began trying to collect valuables. She found the savings bonds and the photo albums. "I got an armful of suits and two pair of shoes," recalls John. The kids, watching from the station wagon, began screaming...