Apr 2

Apr 2 The Power of Words

"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. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet — there is where the bullet went through — and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best."

- Theodore Roosevelt improvising the first lines of what was supposed to be a 50-page written speech.

October 14, 1912

En route to a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt is shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank while greeting the public in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel. Schrank's .38-caliber revolver is aimed squarely at Roosevelt's heart, but the bullet fails to take the life of the former president; its force greatly diminished by the folded manuscript and glasses case tucked into breast pocket of his coat.

Above is the actual speech, on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace museum in Manhattan, New York.