How A Summer Snack Of Cherries And Iced Milk Killed A US President

The names of certain presidential assassins will forever live in infamy such as John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Others, like Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz, are a bit more obscure, possibly because they have names that are harder to spell. The most unacknowledged assassin of all, however, is the one that struck down President Zachary Taylor before he'd spent two years in office: cherries and milk. Yes, this dangerous duo did away with the 12th POTUS in July 1850, paving the way for Millard Fillmore to take office. There are no conspiracy theories here, however.

President Taylor's demise may have been a case of food poisoning, although at this late date, it's not certain whether the cherries or milk were to blame. (The ice cubes used to chill the milk could have also been the culprit.) All we know is that President Taylor consumed both items on July 4 at a ceremony marking the installation of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument and subsequently contracted a fatal illness that triggered severe stomach pains and vomiting. His doctor at the time assumed the cause of death to have been cholera, although other theories have included typhoid, dysentery, or even poisoning. (An exhumation did find some arsenic in President Taylor's system, but it was not a fatal dose.) At this point, it's probably safe to assume we'll never really know what killed Old Rough and Ready, but we're glad that food safety standards have come a long way since the 1850s. 

The cherries and milk that seem to have been President Zachary Taylor's undoing may have been consumed for political reasons. President Taylor, after all, wanted to please the electorate by gratefully accepting what they offered him. History does not tell us what he really felt about cherries or milk before this incident, though. Instead, the Virginia-born president, who later made his home in Baton Rouge, was said to have been a big fan of Creole cuisine. One dish that he's known to have enjoyed was a type of rice fritters known as calas. These rice fritters were thought to have originated in Africa and were sold on Sundays by enslaved women who'd been granted this one opportunity to earn money.

Yet another dish associated with President Taylor is something that seems to have fallen out of favor over the intervening two centuries: raccoon and squirrel pie. Back in the 1800s, however, hunting for sustenance was not unknown, and several other presidents — William Henry Harrison and James Garfield — were known to enjoy squirrel soup or stew. It seems these presidents were ahead of their time; some modern chefs have championed squirrel as the ultimate sustainable meat source. 

Squirrel is not the only strange food preference presidents have indulged in over the years. William Howard Taft loved him some roast possum while several other presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, were fond of turtle. (Rest assured that modern presidents, along with all other Americans, have stopped eating turtle.) We have to be honest: All this information is making Donald Trump's 2017 diet of well-done steak and Diet Coke look completely unremarkable.