Last year, in the final weeks, and then days, preceding the presidential election, the pundits were talking about how close the race seemed to be. They were intently focused on the “battleground states.” They worried (or were they really rubbing their hands together in eager anticipation?) that some of the state vote tallies might be so close as to trigger automatic recounts. And that could lead to legal challenges. There were echoes of Florida in 2000. It didn’t turn out that way, probably to the disappointment of some journalists (and maybe lawyers) and the relief of everyone else.

But it brought to mind conversations I’d had during the six weeks or so of the contested election of 2000, that period between Election Day and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling. Perhaps, I said to the medical students and residents I was supervising in the emergency department, neither Bush nor Gore should want to be the winner, because of the tragic history of presidents elected in years ending in zero.

I noted that the last president elected in a year ending in zero, Ronald Reagan (1980), had been shot soon after taking office and come perilously close to death. Who, I asked them, was the last president before Reagan to be elected in a year ending in zero and not die in office?

I didn’t expect anyone to know the answer straight away. I wanted to see how they would approach the question, what they knew of presidential history, which I would be able to tell if they tried to work their way back through the years that were multiples of 20 – the presidential election years ending in zero.

Nearly all (I was aghast that it was not all) knew that John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 and assassinated. But things went downhill quickly from there. Most did not know that Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1940 (and, of course, also 1932, 1936, and 1944) and died in office (in the spring of 1945, from a cerebral hemorrhage), to be succeeded by Harry Truman.

As I recall, exactly no one knew that Warren Harding was elected in 1920, died in office, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. I believe one person knew William McKinley was elected in 1900, assassinated by an anarchist, and succeeded by Teddy Roosevelt.

James Garfield was shot in 1881 by a psychotic man who believed Garfield should have recognized the work he’d done on behalf of the presidential campaign (which was trivial) and appointed him to an important job. The bullet wound was actually not that bad – nowhere near as serious as the one that almost took the life of Ronald Reagan. Garfield was more a victim of the terrible medical care he received. No one knew that. I can’t say I was surprised, but I was disappointed just the same, if only because the medical part of the story was so important.

Truly appalling, however, was that not everyone knew 1860 was the year of Lincoln’s first election, although of course everyone knew he’d been assassinated.

The year 1840 offers yet another especially interesting piece of presidential history. William Henry Harrison was elected. In those days inauguration was on March 4. (It didn’t move into January until FDR was president. The nation decided that the wait until nearly spring for Roos­evelt’s inauguration had been too long, given the urgency of addressing the economic woes of the Great Depression. So 1933 was the last year it was March 4, and it was then moved to January 20). Harrison gave his inaugural address outdoors. The weather in early March in Washington, D.C., is usually mild, but in 1841 it was not. Harrison did not wear an overcoat. A month later he died of pneumonia. Causality, of course, is open to question, but the result was that Harrison became the first U.S. president to die in office.

No. That’s the answer to your question. Not a single one of the young medical trainees knew anything about Harrison or his vice president, John Tyler. What a shame. Because it’s a fascinating story.

Harrison, you see, was not a politician, but a war hero, best remembered for the Battle of Tippecanoe. (Remember the campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too?”) He was recruited by the Whig Party, which was desperate to win the White House. The Whig party was opposed to just about everything Andrew Jackson (Democratic president elected in 1828 and 1832) stood for, but they had learned from dealing with the hero of the Battle of New Orleans (1815) just how popular war heroes can be. Harrison was perfectly willing to run on the Whig party platform, which was very short on detail, as he had no fixed political principles of his own. The Whigs then needed a candidate for the No. 2 spot on the ticket. Harrison was from Ohio, so they looked south of the Mason-Dixon line for geographic balance and asked John Tyler of Virginia. Tyler was a Democrat, but apparently not a loyal Democrat, as he agreed to run for VP as a Whig.

Then Harrison died, and Tyler assumed office. This had never happened before, and the Constitution was not entirely clear on how it should work. The Constitution said that in the event of the death of the president, the “powers and duties” of the office “shall devolve on the Vice President.” What wasn’t clear, however, was whether the VP actually became president, with all of the accoutrements of the office, or whether he was just the acting president.

It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if Tyler had been a loyal Whig. But not only was he really, after all, a Virginia Democrat who differed with the Whig party’s principles in important ways, but he started doing something earlier presidents had generally not done: vetoing bills passed by Congress because he didn’t like them.

Congressional Whigs were livid, and came very close to mustering the votes to impeach Tyler. They refused to call him the president, referring to him as the acting president – or “His Accidency.”

No one I asked knew any of this. Nor did they know that our fifth president, James Monroe, had been elected in 1816 and 1820 and served his two terms in full, the last president before Reagan to be elected in a year ending in zero and survive to the end of his elected tenure.

So I did not expect anyone to respond to my initial question by saying, “James Monroe!” I just wanted to see what they knew of presidential history. Damned little, as it turned out.

Far too few of us show much interest in history in grade school or college, and I’m sure it’s at least partly because there are too few history teachers who make the subject interesting, as some of mine did. This is a terrible shame. American history is fascinating, and studying presidential history is a wonderful way to approach it.

Thomas Carlyle said, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” We’ve had forty-three presidents (Grover Cleveland, who served two noncontinuous terms, is counted twice to get to No. 44 for Barack Obama). The history of our nation is most certainly the history of these men, especially if you read the sort of expansive biography – “The Man and His Times” – that is the kind really worth reading.

I tell residents who train at our institution that there is more to learn in the emergency department than medicine. A sense of history is something I hope to give each of them, at least a little bit, by the time they’ve completed the three years I have to influence their lives.

Dr. Solomon teaches emergency medicine to residents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and is Medical Editor in Chief of ACEP News. He is a social critic and political pundit and blogs at www.bobsolomon.blogspot.com.