The other day, for some reason I can't quite explain, I was looking into the 1881 death of one of our most overlooked presidents: James A. Garfield, Republican of Ohio. 

You've got to feel for Garfield, considering he only lasted 200 days as prez and spent the last 80 of them dying slowly and painfully. (Only poor William Henry Harrison's 32-day term was shorter.) In fact, dying in a fairly exciting fashion might be Garfield's greatest achievement of all. Let's find out about only the most exciting parts of it, below! 

First, what happened? I'm sure you all vaguely recall the story from high school: Charles Guiteau, pissed off and extra crazy federal appointment seeker shoots our hero as he walks through a train station in Philadelphia. Garfield doesn't die immediately, but instead floats in and out of consciousness for the next eleven weeks, experiencing every not-fun-thing you can imagine--blood poisoning, hallucinations, fevers--before finally giving up the ghost. 

Onto the crazy! 

Let's start with Guiteau, our assassin. Remarkably forward thinking and self-aware (also crazy), he chose a lovely ivory-handled gun to shoot the president, believing it would look great in a museum exhibition about the assassination. And he was probably right, although, alas, the gun has been lost. 

In another move that maybe should have raised some flags, Guiteau visited DC's main jail and asked for a tour, as to see where he would be incarcerated. Sadly, no one seems to have taken him around. 

But guess what, Guiteau didn't really need to be competent because it was extremely easy to kill presidents back then. The Secret Service didn't take on the role of protecting presidents until 1902, so Garfield was on his own. He just walked around like a normal person, can you imagine?!

The shooting took place in the summer, and if there's one thing everyone knows about Washington D.C., it's that it's hot and sweaty during the summer. Imagine you're a dying president in that sweltering heat of 1881: what do you need most? A primitive air conditioner, of course! 

And since you're the president, that's exactly what you'll get. According this very reputable website, Naval engineers (yes), basically took some ice, melted it, soaked fabric in it, and used a fan to blow the cold air onto our dying president. And it worked! Go air conditioning! (Well, it worked so far as making the air cooler, not saving his life.)

Onto the next crazy invention used to try and save our friend James: the metal detector. You see, no one could find the bullet that was causing all this trouble. Enter Alexander Graham Bell, who rigged up a machine to try and find out where the bullet was. Unfortunately, it didn't really work, because it kept finding the bed springs and frame instead of the bullet, but it was a good try nonetheless.

Lastly, and most despairingly, is the conjecture that James could have been saved, if only he had better doctors. That's a pretty astounding thought because who would have had better doctors than the President of the United States, even if it was 1881? Everyone, apparently, because these guys did things like stick dirty fingers into the bullet hole in an attempt to find it. One of them even managed to puncture his liver! The thinking is that these bad doctors caused infection, eventually leading to Garfield's death. 

If we've learned nothing else, it's that this guy should be way more famous. I know I have a new favorite president. 

(Most of this information is from the handy Wikipedia page on the subject. Thanks Wikipedia!)