US President Theodore Roosevelt was saved by the length of his speech after being shot in the chest with a .38-caliber revolver.
It was 1912 and Roosevelt was running for a third presidential term on the third-party Progressive, or Bull Moose, ticket. He was up against Woodrow Wilson and his vice president-turned-bitter-rival William Taft.
"It was a very vitriolic campaign," Clay S. Jenkinson, the Theodore Roosevelt humanities scholar at Dickinson State University's Theodore Roosevelt Center, tells Business Insider. "TR offended the Republican establishment by challenging Taft for the nomination in the Republican Party. Then the party offended TR by maneuvering the convention in Chicago to favor the incumbent. TR, at that point, bolted."
