Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for June 09, 2012

Balloons & Blunderbusses, that is how the duel was fought in the movie “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines!”

the bullet hit Teddy’s speech and the is why he lived through that ordeal.

so that means the width of it’s head is as long as half the length of it’s body?

TR was shot before his speech not during.

TR was not President at the time of that assassination attempt. It happened while he was running for office on the Progressive ( Bull Moose ) ticket, a move that basically destroyed his poiltical career. The Republican Party never forgave him for splitting the Repub vote and handing the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson

“It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

“…let’s go on with the show!”

I’m speechless!

I think he shot back and hit the would-be assassin, too.

There’s an interesting write-up of The Balloon Duel by Tom Sleman at http://thomasslemen.tripod.com/balloon.htmlIt ends:

“…De Grand returned to earth, the hero of the day, and he marched straight to the most beautiful woman in Europe. She had agreed to marry the survivor, but a woman who stood between him removed her hood. She announced that De Grand was already married – to her. And her lawyer produced the marriage papers to prove it. So Gwen Tirevitt married De Grand’s assistant, and she bore him 5 children.”

Did they shoot at each other or the opponents gas bag?

There’s something wrong with the shark description. Shouldn’t it be: “The width of it’s head is equal to half the length of its body?”

TR felt betrayed by his chosen succesor, William Howard Taft, who failed to follow up on any of the progressive initiatives that he had begun as President, including natural conservation and regulation of industry. Had Taft and his machine not controlled the GOP establishment in 1912, the rank and file of the Republican Party would probably have nominated Roosevelt and he would have gone on to defeat Wilson.

He spoke for 87 minutes (1.5 hours), not “nearly and hour”. Silly…