Not everything you learned about history in grade school is actually true
By I missed this from Tapper the other day. Commenting on the fact that Obama and Biden appeared in a Virginia rainstorm, he wrote:
Astute students of history have noted, weather is not something politicians should take lightly. The presidency of William Henry Harrison, indeed Harrison’s life lasted a mere month after after he caught a cold at his inauguration, which was held outside on a chilly Washington morning.
I won’t be too hard on the guy here, since I only learned about two years ago that Harrison actually didn’t fall ill after delivering his inaugural address, but instead developed a cold — and soon after pneumonia and pleurisy — three weeks into his presidency. But still. If you’re going to make a medically untrue observation about how people actually get sick, and if you’re unwilling to spend a few seconds on the internets to weigh the historical veracity of your irrelevant aside, you’d do well not to open the sentence by invoking what “astute students” happen to think.
He could have salvaged himself, though, by at least linking to this definitive account of Harrison’s life: