Theodore Roosevelt was shot mid-speech in an assassination attempt in 1912. He refused to have medical treatment until he delivered his 90 minute speech, in which he showed off the bullet wound to the crowd.
He was wearing his Army overcoat and carrying a 50-page speech – folded double to fit into the breast pocket where he had also tucked his metal spectacles case and that saved his life that day. The bullet was slowed and didn’t reach his lungs or heart.
Roosevelt coughed into his hand and, seeing no blood, he knew that the bullet didn’t enter his lungs. He suffered only a flesh wound from the attack, refused medical attention and went on to deliver the speech.
“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot – but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.
He spoke for 90 minutes still wearing his blood-soaked shirt, until he agreed to go to the hospital.
He would spend the next 8 days in the hospital where doctors examined him and X-rays determined that the bullet had lodged in a rib. Doctors decided it was safer to leave the bullet in his chest and it remained there for the rest of his life.
