Lloyd Bentsen

popular name: Grover Cleveland

date_of_death: June 24, 1908

age: 71

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: World Leaders

best_know_for: Grover Cleveland was the first Democrat elected after the Civil War in 1885, as the 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). President Cleveland vigorously pursued policies barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: “Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . . ” He also vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too. He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres. He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads. Upon retirement Cleveland moved to Princeton where, in the autumn of 1907 he fell seriously ill. In 1908, he suffered a heart attack and died on June 24 at age 71 in his Princeton residence. His last words were, "I have tried so hard to do right."

popular name: James A. Garfield

date_of_death: September 19, 1881

age: 49

cause_of_death: Heart attack, ruptured splenic artery with massive hemorrhage, septic blood poisoning

claim_to_fame: World Leaders

best_know_for: James A. Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March to September 1881. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau (a disappointed and delusional office seeker) at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. four months into his presidency. Interesting to note that Garfield did not actually died from the gunshot, but rather from infections introduced by his doctors. He died two months later on September 19, 1881 and Guiteau was executed for Garfield's murder in June 1882.

popular name: King Leopold II of Belgium

date_of_death: December 17, 1909

age: 74

cause_of_death: Embolism

claim_to_fame: World Leaders

best_know_for: Leopold II was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner and beneficiary of the riches extracted from the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. The Congo Free State, a private colonial project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium used the famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim and committed the Congo Free State to him. Leopold ran the Congo, which he never personally visited, by using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain. He extracted a fortune from the territory, initially by the collection of ivory and, after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Leopold's administration was characterized by systematic brutality and atrocities in the Congo Free State, including forced labour, torture, murder, kidnapping, and the amputation of the hands of men, women, and children when the quota of rubber was not met. It is estimated that during his reign of terror in the Congo, 15 million died (out of a total population of 30 million) during the genocide and is considered by historians as the worst of European Colonialism.