Monday, Jul. 08, 1991

American Notes Presidents

It turns out that President Zachary Taylor was not poisoned by political enemies who laced his iced cherries or milk with arsenic after all. He died the old-fashioned way, of natural causes, according to the medical examiner who studied Taylor's remains last week. Clara Rising, an author researching a book on Taylor, had raised the suspicion that "Old Rough and Ready" was murdered.

But there are still plenty of graves to plunder and conspiracy theories to test. A team of scientists is planning to exhume the remains of Carl A. Weiss, the doctor who is believed to have assassinated Senator Huey Long of Louisiana back in 1935. Weiss was gunned down at the scene by Long's bodyguards. By analyzing the angles of the bullet holes, the scientists may be able to show that the guards shot Long and killed Weiss to cover their crime. Whether any new light can be shed on that issue by examining a 56-year-old corpse remains unclear. Is there no rest for the dead?