Live-tweeting the events surrounding the assassination of William McKinley from September 4–19, 1865, 125 years after they actually happened.
Here's a list of some of the main secondary sources I've used to put this project together:
- Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Ida McKinley: The Turn-of-the-Century First Lady through War, Assassination, and Secret Disability.
- Barry, Richard. An Historic Memento of the Nation's Loss.
- Gable, C. A. McKinley Assassination Ink: A Documentary History of William McKinley's Assassination.
- Johns, A. Wesley. The Man Who Shot McKinley.
- Journal of the American Medical Association. "The Official Report on the Case of President M‘Kinley".
- Leech, Margaret. In the Days of McKinley.
- Pickenpaugh, Roger. McKinley, Murder and the Pan-American Exposition: A History of the Presidential Assassination, September 6, 1901.
- Rixey, Presley M. Medical and Surgical Report of the Case of the Late President of the United States.
- Seibert, Jeffrey W. "I Done My Duty": The Complete Story of the Assassination of President McKinley.
- "Teddy Roosevelt: Night Ride to the Presidency 125th Anniversary, 1901 – 2026".
- Townsend, George Washington. Our Martyred President: Memorial Life of William McKinley.
- Wilson, Nelson W. "Details of President McKinley's Case", Buffalo Medical Journal.
Primary sources, most of them accessed through Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank, include the Buffalo Courier, Enquirer, News, Post, Review, and Times; the Canton Repository; and the Washington Post for the relevant dates. Extra-special thanks goes to the Buffalo Express, whose reporters were particularly meticulous about following the President around with a pocket-watch and noting exact times to the minute.
* But why is there an apostrophe in M‘KINLEY, you may be asking? In 1901, it was more or less standard to write surnames beginning with "Mc" using an apostrophe instead of a lowercase "c", when using all-caps. So you would see McKinley and M‘KINLEY on the same page, but rarely M‘Kinley and never, ever MCKINLEY. As far as I can tell, this is because most typefaces used for newspaper headlines didn't come with lowercase letters, and an apostrophe was the closest thing printers had to a lowercase "c" for those fonts. Possibly the inspiration for it is that a leftward-curving apostrophe looks particularly similar to a lowercase ᶜ in superscript, but newspapers frequently neglected that and would write M'KINLEY or even M’KINLEY without hesitation.
This project was created by Ben "@reschultzed" Schultz. More about me here.
Last updated September 17, 2026