If you somehow haven’t heard by now, there was yet another attempt on Donald Trump’s life over the weekend while he was golfing in Florida. Ryan Wesley Routh was allegedly spotted holding a rifle by Secret Service agents in the bushes of the Trump International Golf Course. The 58-year-old tried to flee but was quickly arrested and is now facing a whole lot of jail time for his failed assassination.



The list of botched presidential assassination attempts is long and full of memorable moments — like when Richard Lawrence unsuccessfully tried to shoot Andrew Jackson, who then proceeded to beat the shit out of Lawrence with his cane — but there is a much shorter and more controversial list that you likely didn’t learn about in history class: Presidential deaths that may have actually been secret assassinations.


Before we get into the specifics, you may be asking, What does it even mean for a president to be secretly assassinated? Well, according to some historians, at least two presidents whose deaths were publicly declared as involving no foul play may have involved some nefarious scheming.


In 1848, Zachary Taylor was elected the 12th President of the United States during a time when tension was growing between the North and South over the issue of states’ rights, which was the preferred euphemism for slavery by slave owners. Despite being a slave-owning Southerner himself, Taylor became Public Enemy #1 in the South once he took office, as he opposed the expansion of slavery in new territories, including California and New Mexico.



Two years later, Taylor was dead. The official cause of death was cholera morbus, a convenient catch-all term during that time for intestinal ailments that could range from diarrhea to dysentery, which was reportedly caused by the president indulging in some cherries and milk on Fourth of July.


But almost immediately following Taylor’s death, there have been theories that this may have quietly been the first successful presidential assassination in American history. The theory generally goes that pro-slavery Southerners poisoned Taylor because Millard Fillmore, Taylor’s Vice President, was viewed as much more sympathetic to slave owners.


Over 150 later, there is still controversy about how Taylor died. In 1991, Taylor’s closest living relative agreed to have the former president’s remains exhumed to test for any traces of poisoning, and it was determined that arsenic levels were too low to be poisonous.


But historian Michael Parenti argues in his book, History as Mystery, that these findings shouldn’t be seen as conclusive evidence since scientists analyzed the entirety of Taylor’s hairs instead of just analyzing the roots, which he claims would be where the traces of arsenic would be found.


Taylor’s arsenic-flavored milk isn’t the only potential presidential poisoning either, as there’s also some controversy surrounding the death of Warren G. Harding. In 1923, the 29th president died unexpectedly in San Francisco. According to an official statement from the White House, the cause of Harding’s death was “a stroke of apoplexy.”



Now, thanks to a better understanding of how the body works, it’s generally believed that Harding actually died from a heart attack that was misdiagnosed. But once again, the surrounding circumstances of his death have caused some to call it into question.


Leading up to his untimely demise, Harding was on a cross-country trip deemed the Voyage of Understanding, where he intended to meet with voters all across America to discuss his policies. However, during his travels, rumors began to circulate about widespread corruption in Harding’s cabinet, which led many to speculate about Harding’s potential impeachment.


The belief that Harding was poisoned has very little support among historians and is widely seen as a half-baked conspiracy theory. But the one intriguing detail is that Harding’s wife Florence didn’t consent to having an autopsy performed on her deceased husband for unknown reasons. What’s that all about?



Overall, there’s no concrete evidence that Taylor, Harding or any other president was discreetly murdered, but in our current conspiracy-mongering time, it’s also not the craziest suggestion either. In fact, in Taylor’s case in particular, it makes a lot more sense than the idea of JFK Jr. returning from the grave and becoming the next vice president.