October 14 | Moments Almanac | Prize
The Bullet and the Prize | October 14 Two men. Two October fourteenths. Fifty-two years apart. One was struck by an assassin’s bullet. The other received the world's most prestigious peace prize. Both would leave an extraordinary mark on history. On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest while campaigning in Milwaukee. A folded speech manuscript and a steel eyeglass case helped slow the bullet. Remarkably, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his speech anyway. On October 14, ...
The Bullet and the Prize | October 14
Two men. Two October fourteenths. Fifty-two years apart. One was struck by an assassin’s bullet. The other received the world's most prestigious peace prize. Both would leave an extraordinary mark on history.
On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest while campaigning in Milwaukee. A folded speech manuscript and a steel eyeglass case helped slow the bullet. Remarkably, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his speech anyway.
On October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was resting in an Atlanta hospital when a telephone call from his wife, Coretta, brought astonishing news: he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Less than four years later, King would fall to an assassin's bullet in Memphis.
In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore the unpredictable intersections of violence, honor, courage, and perseverance. Two remarkable lives remind us that we cannot control every chapter of our story, but we can choose what we stand for with the time we're given.
We cannot always determine how long our voices will be heard. But we can make certain we have something worth saying.
Moments Almanac — Finding meaning in the moments that made history.
Welcome to Moments Almanac for October 14th. And on this day in 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to deliver a campaign speech. He'd already served nearly eight years as President of the United States, and now at 53, he was running again, this time as a candidate for the Progressive Party. He was a man known for his boundless energy, his booming voice, and his stubborn refusal to back down from a fight. But on this particular evening, the fight came looking for him. As Roosevelt stood in an open automobile outside his hotel, a man stepped forward from the crowd, raised a revolver, and fired. The bullet struck Roosevelt in the chest, and for a moment there was chaos. His companions wanted to rush him to the hospital, but Roosevelt had other plans. You see, tucked inside his coat pocket was a thick folded manuscript of a speech he intended to deliver, along with a steel eyeglass case. The bullet had passed through both before entering his body. Those ordinary objects had slowed it just enough to save his life. Roosevelt checked himself. He wasn't coughing blood, which led him to believe the bullet hadn't pierced his lung. And then he did something almost unimaginable. He insisted on giving his speech. Imagine that. A man just shot in the chest, and your friends are pleading with you to seek medical attention, and you're worried about being late for a speaking engagement. I suppose there are some people who simply cannot be persuaded to cancel. Roosevelt arrived at the auditorium and stood before a stunned audience. He told them he had been shot, and then he famously declared It takes more than that to kill a bull moose. He spoke for more than an hour, with a bullet lodged inside his chest. Only afterward did he finally agree to go to the hospital. Roosevelt survived. The bullet would remain in his body for the rest of his life, and history would remember that October evening as an extraordinary display of determination. But fifty-two years later, on that very same day, another American leader would receive news that would change his life, and his story would take a very different turn. On October 14th, 1964, Atlanta, Georgia, doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was thirty five years old. He had already helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott, endured prison, faced threats against family, and stood before hundreds of thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial to declare that he had a dream. Now he was exhausted. The struggle of the civil rights had taken an enormous toll on his body and his spirit. So King checked himself into the hospital in Atlanta for rest and treatment. And there, in the quiet of his hospital room, the telephone rang. It was his wife, Coretta. She had extraordinary news. Martin Luther King junior had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At thirty five he was the youngest person ever to receive that honor at that time. Consider the contrast. In Milwaukee, a gunshot had interrupted Theodore Roosevelt's journey in Atlanta. A telephone call had interrupted Martin Luther King's rest. One interruption carried violence and the other carried recognition for a commitment to nonviolence. And neither man could have known what lay ahead. King accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that December in Oslo, Norway, but he understood that the honor was not simply a celebration of what had already been accomplished, but there was still work to do, still injustice to confront, still hatred to overcome, still a dream worth pursuing. And so he kept going. Through more threats, more marches, more opposition, more nights when the future must have seemed terribly uncertain. Until April 4th, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, another assassin, another bullet. Martin Luther King Jr. was thirty-nine years old. And here's something that stayed with me as I thought through these two stories. Roosevelt survived the bullet and continued his life. King did not survive the bullet, but his message continued long after his death. Two men. Two October fourteenths. Two very different interruptions. And a reminder that life is never as predictable as we imagine. We make plans, we fill our calendars, we assume tomorrow will look something like today. And then the telephone rings or a doctor calls or an opportunity appears that we never saw coming. And something happens that changes everything. Some interruptions bring wonderful surprises and others bring unimaginable sorrow. And sometimes the very same life contains both. The question is not whether life will surprise us, it will.
