Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of Abraham Lincoln, had a distinguished career as a lawyer, Secretary of War, and diplomat. Yet history remembers him best for an uncanny, morbid coincidence: he was nearby for the assassinations of three different U. S.
presidents. The streak began on April 14, 1865, when young Robert declined an invitation to join his parents at Ford's Theatre due to fatigue from his army duties. Hours later, John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln, and Robert was rushed to his father's deathbed, holding his hand until he passed.
Sixteen years later, Robert was serving as Secretary of War under President James A. Garfield. On July 2, 1881, Robert was walking alongside Garfield at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.
C. , when assassin Charles J. Guiteau opened fire at point-blank range, fatally wounding the president.
Two decades after Garfield's death, history repeated itself in Buffalo, New York. President William McKinley invited Robert to attend the Pan-American Exposition on September 6, 1901. Just as Robert stepped into the Temple of Music, Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley twice.
Realizing the grim pattern that seemed to follow him, Robert famously began declining all future presidential invitations, remarking that there was a certain fatality about presidential invitations when he was present. In an unbelievable twist of fate prior to all this, Robert was once saved from a fatal train track accident by Edwin Booth, the famous actor and brother of John Wilkes Booth.