Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 6, 2014

U.S. President William McKinley was shot and fatally wounded on September 6, 1901, while shaking hands with the public in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He died on September 14 from gangrene caused by the bullet wounds. Re-elected president in 1900, McKinley enjoyed meeting the public, and was reluctant to take security precautions. The Secretary to the President, George B. Cortelyou, feared an assassination attempt at the Temple of Music, but McKinley kept the visit in the schedule. The assassin was Leon Czolgosz, who had lost his job during the economic Panic of 1893. He regarded McKinley as a symbol of oppression, and felt it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him. Unable to get near McKinley earlier in the visit, Czolgosz shot McKinley twice as the President reached to shake his hand in the reception line (1905 illustration shown). McKinley initially appeared to be recovering, but took a turn for the worse on September 13 and died early the next morning; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. Czolgosz was executed for the murder and Congress passed legislation giving the responsibility of protecting the president to the Secret Service. (Full article...)

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