Acting President of the United States On April 4, 1841, only one month after his inauguration, President William Henry Harrison died. He was the first U.S. president to die in office. Afterward, a constitutional crisis ensued over the Constitution's ambiguous presidential succession provision (). Shortly after Harrison's death, his Cabinet met and decided that Vice President John Tyler would assume the responsibilities of presidency under the title "Vice-President acting President". Instead of accepting the Cabinet's proposed title, however, Tyler asserted that the Constitution gave him full and unqualified powers of the office and had himself sworn in immediately as President, setting a critical precedent for an
On This Day in History On This Day in History On This Day In History was a feature on the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show in the UK between 1988 and 1993. It was devised by the programme's presenter at the time, Simon Mayo. Mayo, a history graduate from University of Warwick, used the day's date each morning to regurgitate historical anniversaries and events which had happened on that date in years passed. As a quirk, he would often add a mildly cynical punchline to each of the stories he recounted, and then would get his "crew" (female co-host, newsreader and producer) each to guess