On October 27, 1858, Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City, the son of a wealthy merchant family. He was a sickly child and was told to build up his body, and he took up boxing and riding, and he studied at Harvard and then at Columbia law school, and he left the law for politics and was elected to the state assembly at the age of 23. He rose quickly. He wrote a naval history that was well received before he was 25.
His career ran through many posts. He was a civil service commissioner, a police commissioner in New York, an assistant secretary of the navy, and, in 1898, the colonel of a volunteer cavalry regiment known as the Rough Riders, which he led in Cuba during the war with Spain, and the charge up a hill outside Santiago made him a national figure. He was elected governor of New York the same year, and he became vice president in 1901, and he took over the presidency in September of that year when William McKinley was shot and died.
As president he was active in several fields. The record was long. He used the antitrust laws against large companies, and he took part in a coal strike as an arbitrator, and he set aside large areas of forest and public land as national reserves and parks, and he pushed for the building of the Panama canal and for a stronger navy. He mediated the end of the war between Russia and Japan in 1905 and was given the Nobel peace prize for it. He won the election of 1904 in his own right.
He left office in 1909 and travelled, and in 1912 he ran again as the candidate of a new party and was defeated, and he was shot and wounded during the campaign but went on to speak. He supported the entry of the United States into the First World War and asked to lead a regiment, and he was refused. He died in 1919. The fame lasted. His portrait is on Mount Rushmore.