The curse of Tecumseh

In 1813, troops of American President William Henry Harrison killed an Indian chief Tecumseh. Before he died, Tecumseh wished that any American President elected in the year that ended with zero would die before the end of his term. The curse of Tecumseh has killed every such US President before the end of their terms in office. The first victim of the curse was Harrison himself.

Harrison, elected in 1840, died of pneumonia after serving 31 days in office. Lincoln, elected in 1860, was assassinated and so was President Garfield who was elected in 1880. McKinley, elected to a second term in 1900, was assassinated. President Harding, elected in 1920, died of a stroke in 1923 before he could finish his term. Roosevelt, elected to a third term in 1940, died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1945. President John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, was assassinated as well.

President Reagan, elected in 1980, survived an attempted assassination. Some say that the curse has finally been broken after this. Chief Tecumseh and the dreaded Zero have had their revenge.

Zero was introduced to Europe during Italian renaissance in the 12th century by Leonardo Fibonacci and Nemorarius, another mathematician, as cifra, derived from the Arabic sifer. Sifer, in turn, is derived from a Hindi word shunya that means a small circle. In French chiffre, and in German ziffer means zero.

Fibonacci derived zero from the work a Persian scholar, Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn (al)-Khwarizmi, who in turn in the 7th century, had documented in Arabic, the original work of a Hindu mathematician, Mahaviral. When these scholarly treatises were being translated by European clerks, they translated the text as 1, 2, 3 an so on; upon reaching zero, they said, "empty!". The clerk did not know what to write and was asked to draw an empty hole, the present notation for zero. Without it, science would have been nowhere today. In ancient times, zero was a well-guarded secret. Countries like India had it and reaped the benefits.

"When you travel, don’t tell anyone about zero," a king tells a merchant. "He found out about zero; we will have to kill him," the commander-in-chief says after entering the court. He has a prisoner with him.

"Sir, there are rumours of a number less than 1," says a European lieutenant to the General. "Day dreamers! You enlisted men will believe anything," says the General. However, eventually, the word got out as it is with most secrets, and zero was no longer one.

The number systems of ancient cultures like Egyptian and Roman did not have a symbol for zero. Their concepts that were similar to zero were like "none", "empty" or "no money". However, these concepts ware not even considered numbers, just as infinity is not a number today. Without the zero digit, they had two problems — Their arithmetic was cumbersome and they found it difficult to represent large numbers.

Positional notation was invented in Babylonia. It was reinvented in India. In this notation, the two in 24 does not represent 2 at all, but 20 because of its position in the number. The four, on the other hand, indeed represents four, because of its position. In describing this, we have used the concept of zero. Zero, unlike Indian Olympic participants, is a place holder. The zero in 3017 means zero 100s. Therefore, 3017 means 3x1000+0x100+1x10+7x1. By using zero, arithmetic becomes easier and large numbers are easy to represent.

— Aditya Rishi