Assassinated Mayor Cermak Mausoleum

Chicago, Illinois

Anton Cermak was Chicago's mayor in the early 1930s and was frustrated by a real estate tax strike. Seeking federal money, he went to shake hands with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933. That turned out to be the wrong place at absolutely the wrong time. A crazed maniac named Giuseppe Zangara shot at FDR with a handgun and instead hit Cermak (and four other people, but FDR escaped unscathed). Cermak reportedly told FDR, "I'm glad it was me, not you," then lay in a hospital bed for almost three weeks before dying.

Cermak was hailed as a martyr, although his personal physician was convinced that he had died of ulcerative colitis, not the bullet wound, and there has always been speculation that Cermak, not FDR, was the target, either because Cermak was a threat to the Chicago mob or because he was working on behalf of a rival Chicago mob.