Your history lesson on the death of Warren G Harding

Talkeetna, the Fairview Inn, and Warren G Harding

He was the 29th President of the US, serving from 1921-1923. He succeeded Woodrow Wilson.  He had been a newspaper publisher and the Senator from Ohio. When he was elected President, he brought along a lot of cronies who proved to be into graft and corruption.  He decided to take a trip around the country, and became the first President to visit Alaska where he had dinner at the Fairview Inn (ah Hah!)  He had been feeling poorly and had been known to have heart problems, but he had a holistic doctor (shades of Michael Jackson) who insisted on purges and laxatives.  He was ill when he left Alaska and some said he got ptomaine poisoning from some bad crab legs at the Fairview Inn.  He gave a lecture at the University of Washington, cancelled another speech in Oregon, and died in San Francisco a few days after his visit to the Fairview Inn.  Calvin Coolidge was the VP and became President.

There was a lot of speculation about his death, and it is the favorite of true crime TV programs.  Several theories!

He really died at the Fairview Inn, in the arms of his mistress Nan Britton, and his death was covered up until the body was transported to San Francisco. Or someone poisoned him when he ate at the Fairview Inn.

His wife did him in because she was sick of his extra marital affairs, or because there was a scandal brewing (The Teapot Dome Scandal)  and  she wanted to spare him. She refused an autopsy, which is why her involvement gained credibility.

He committed suicide because he had just learned that his Administration was under investigation and there would be a lot of revelations he wasn’t prepared to deal with.

The doctor did him in (negligent homicide) with his unorthodox treatment when the man was having a heart attack and he was being treated with purgatives.

Natural causes, meaning that he had a bad heart, and was a womanizer, a heavy smoker and drinker, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning playing poker, and his health failed as a result, but also brought on by the rigors of the trip and the stress caused by the pending scandal.

Or, one woman wrote a book that said he was black, the son of slaves who escaped on the Underground Railroad, and that he “Passed” into the white world, and may have been killed because of it.  She wrote it as a member of his black family. The book is called “Death by Blackness”.

Or, he was killed by vampires.
 (an actual theory, I’m not making this up!)