7 Things You Might Not Know About William McKinley

Some American presidents have their faces on currency, some get memorialized in films and sketches. Then there are the others, whose all-but-forgotten names are unceremoniously attached to middle schools and parks across the country—or removed from major mountains. Here’s a look at some facts about our 25th president, William McKinley, who was born 175 years ago today.

1. HE HELPED KEEP A GANG OF COAL MINERS OUT OF PRISON.

McKinley, born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, studied at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania and Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, but he didn’t graduate from either school. After the Civil War erupted, he volunteered for the Union Army, rose to the rank of second lieutenant, and received a brevet commission to major. Following the war he apprenticed under an attorney, studied law for less than a year at New York's Albany College, and was admitted to the bar back in Ohio in March 1867.

Nine years later, McKinley defended a group of striking coal miners who allegedly incited a riot at a mine in Tuscarawas Valley before tussling with the Ohio militia sent by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. All but one of the miners was acquitted, and McKinley refused any compensation for his services.

2. AS PRESIDENT, HE BOOTED SPAIN OUT OF FOUR TERRITORIES.

Even though McKinley’s then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly claimed that his boss possessed “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair” while the situation with Spain was deteriorating, McKinley and Spain would eventually cut off diplomatic relations, and the United States supported Cuba in its struggle with the Spanish.

After the American battleship Maine exploded and sank under mysterious circumstances off the coast of Havana in February 1898, killing 266 sailors, McKinley demanded Spain grant independence to Cuba, and Congress authorized a declaration of war on April 25, 1898 (though they retroactively dated it to April 21). In the roughly 100-day Spanish-American War, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Cuba’s Santiago, seized Manila in the Philippines, and annexed Puerto Rico and Guam, ending Spain’s run of colonial dominance.

3. HIS HOME LIFE WAS TRAGIC.

McKinley married Ida Saxton, a cashier at her father’s bank, in 1871, and she gave birth to a daughter, Katherine, on Christmas Day the same year. A second daughter, Ida, was born in 1873, but died four months later. Katherine passed away from typhoid fever in 1875, and his wife’s health deteriorated due to phlebitis and undiagnosed epilepsy. During their time in the White House, Ida often needed sedation to enable her to sit through official functions as First Lady, and McKinley would throw a handkerchief over her face when she suffered an epileptic seizure.

4. HE ANNEXED THE REPUBLIC OF HAWAII.

McKinley reversed the policy of his predecessor, Grover Cleveland, and advocated for Hawaii to become a U.S. territory. After the Spanish-American War, the strategic importance of the islands’ location in the Pacific Ocean became more apparent, and an annexation resolution supported by McKinley passed the House and Senate in 1898. The episode marked an end to a lengthy battle between native Hawaiians and white American businessmen for control of the local government. The last monarch of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uokalani, was overthrown in 1893, and Benjamin Harrison actually sent a bill to the Senate to approve the annexation. But Grover Cleveland became president before it was passed, and he withdrew the bill. When McKinley became president, he tried to reintroduce the bill, but was stymied by the Hawaiian Patriotic League, who kept the U.S. at bay until the events of 1898.

5. AN ANARCHIST SHOT HIM JUST MONTHS INTO HIS SECOND TERM.

During a public reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. on Sept. 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley twice in the torso while the president greeted guests in a receiving line. McKinley allegedly uttered, “Don’t let them hurt him,” as the angry mob descended on Czolgosz. Later, at the Emergency Hospital on the Exposition grounds, McKinley said of his assassin, “It must have been some poor misguided fellow,” and “He didn’t know, poor fellow, what he was doing. He couldn’t have known.”

6. AN OB/GYN PERFORMED THE EMERGENCY SURGERY THAT FAILED TO SAVE MCKINLEY'S LIFE.

Matthew Mann, a physician and professor of gynecology at the University of Buffalo, was chosen by a hastily assembled group of doctors to perform surgery on McKinley, but the team could not find the second bullet inside the President’s body. A brand-new X-ray machine sent by Thomas Edison arrived in Buffalo but was never used, as it was thought McKinley’s condition was improving. Instead, his health declined as gangrene set in around the path of the bullet. McKinley died on September 14, 1901, eight days after being shot and just six months into his second term as President.

7. MOUNT MCKINLEY LOST MORE THAN 80 FEET IN 2013, AND THEN LOST HIS NAME.

McKinley never set foot in Alaska and never saw the peak named for him by prospector William Dickey, a designation that was made official by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917. That’s probably a good thing, because it’s been a rough few years for McKinley’s spot on the mountain.

First, the mountain shrank. On September 12, 2013, Alaska Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell announced that North America’s highest peak, Mount McKinley, was 20,237 feet tall, 83 feet shorter than previously thought. The U.S. Geological Survey and Alaska’s Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative used new radar technology to correct the earlier height of 20,320 feet, which had been recorded in 1952 using photogrammetry.

Then, the mountain cut its ties to McKinley. Although the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain in 1975 to Denali, a name used by the Koyukon Athabaskan people, for decades Ohio representatives had been blocking name-change requests sent by the Alaskan state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names. Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980 that reverted the name of the area to the Denali National Park and Preserve, but the name of the mountain itself had remained steady until 2015. Associate director for the National Park Service Victor Knox said in June of that year that he had “no objection” to a January bill submitted by Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski that would rename the peak Denali. The change became official in 2015, stripping the 25th president’s name from the highest peak in North America.

But, you should use a non-permanent marker on those atlases—the Ohio delegation, including Speaker John Boehner and Representative Tim Ryan, were quick to denounce the decision and have said they're exploring legal avenues to challenge the decision. And in late 2017, Donald Trump considered reversing the decision, though the Alaska senate told him thanks but no thanks.