The Lincoln Jinx

Well, truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.

Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln, declined an invitation to accompany his parents to the theater one evening in 1865. Robert was awakened during the night and told that his father had been shot. He was there at his father's bedside when his father died the next day.

In 1881 Secretary of War Robert Lincoln was hurrying to join President James Garfield on a train trip. Just as Robert Lincoln arrived at the train station, Garfield was assassinated.

Again in 1901, Robert Lincoln was invited to join President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York. Lincoln got there just as McKinley was fatally shot by an assassin.

After that, for the rest of his life Robert Todd Lincoln declined any invitation to an event where the President of the United States was going to be present.