Curses

I’ve been in a funk for a while now and sometimes I feel like I’m cursed. I really know that I’m not, but that got me to thinking about a lot of the “curses” I’ve heard about over the years, like the curse of the Kennedy family and James Dean and the “Billy Goat” curse…..
Anyhow, I thought today might be a good day to talk about curses.

Almost everyone has heard about the curse of the Kennedy family. The number of Kennedy family tragedies has led a lot of people to believe there must be a curse on the whole bunch. Maybe if the family had stayed out of politics and off airplanes, their fate might have been different, but consider….
JFK’s brother Joseph Jr died in a plane crash in 1944 and his sister Kathleen died in a plane crash in 1948.
Another of JFK’s sisters, Rosemary, was institutionalized in a mental hospital for years.
JFK himself was assassinated in 1963 at age 46.
One of JFK’s younger brothers was assassinated in 1968.
Another younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, survived a plane crash in 1964. In 1969, he was driving a car that went off a bridge, causing the death of his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne. That pretty much squashed his presidential goals. He died in 2009 at age 77.
In 1984, Robert Kennedy’s son David died of a drug overdose. Another son, Michael, died in a skiing accident in 1997.
In 1999, JFK Jr., his wife and his sister-in-law perished when the small plane that he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
So I can understand why the family might think they were cursed….

Another pretty famous “curse” is “Da Billy Goat” curse. In 1945, William “Billy Goat” Sianis brought his pet goat, Murphy, to Wrigley Field to see the fourth game of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers. Sions and his goat were later ejected from the game, and Sianis reportedly put a curse on the team that day. Ever since, the Cubs have had legendary bad luck. Over the years, Cubs fans have experienced agony in repeated late-season collapse when victory seemed imminent. In 1969, 1984, 1989, and 2003, the Cubs were painfully close to advancing to the World Series but couldn’t hold the lead. Even those who don’t consider themselves Cubs fans blame the hex for the weird and almost comical losses year after year. But happily, the Cubs ended the curse by winning the World Series in 2016 — their first since 1908.

One of the more interesting curses, to me, is the curse of Tippecanoe, or Tecumseh’s Curse. This curse is a widely held explanation of the fact that from 1840 to 1960, every U.S. president elected (or reelected) every 20th year has died in office. The popular belief is that Tecumseh administered the curse when William Henry Harrison’s troops defeated the Native American leader and his forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe…..
William Henry Harrison was elected president in 1840. He caught a cold during his inauguration, which quickly turned into pneumonia. He died April 4, 1841, after only one month in office.
Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and reelected four years later. Lincoln was assassinated and died April 15, 1865.
James Garfield was elected president in 1880. Charles Guiteau shot him in July 1881. Garfield died several month later from complications of the gunshot wound. 
William McKinley was elected president in 1896 and reelected in 1900. On September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz, who considered the president an “enemy of the people.” McKinley died eight days later.
Three years after Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1920, he died suddenly of either a heart attack or stroke while traveling in San Francisco.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 and reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944. His health wasn’t great, but he died rather suddenly in 1945, of a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke.
John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated in Dallas three years later.
The curse may have been broken beginning with Reagan. Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and survived an assassination attempt in 1981. And George W. Bush, who was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004, survived both his terms.

In 1922, English explorer Howard Carter, leading an expedition funded by George Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, discovered the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun’s Tomb, and the riches inside. After opening the tomb, however, strange and unpleasant events began to take place in the lives of those involved in the expedition. Lord Carnarvon’s story is the most bizarre — he apparently died from pneumonia and blood poisoning following complications from a mosquito bite. Allegedly, at the exact same moment Carnarvon passed away in Cairo, all the lights in the city mysteriously went out. Carnarvon’s dog dropped dead that morning, too. Some point to the foreboding inscription, “Death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb of a pharaoh,” as proof that King Tut put a curse on anyone who disturbed his final resting place.

Of course, no one really knows for sure if there’s any truth to these curses.
I’ve always heard that there are no such things as curses — only people and their decisions.
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