When I told my boyfriend that I was writing an article about Zachary Taylor, he replied, “Never heard of him.”

So I guess that sets the tone for this guy – a war-hero turned United States president who only survived sixteen months of his presidency. Although he derived many of his accomplishments from wars that were fought to steal indigenous land, I guess we should still know who he is. I wouldn’t say Zachary Taylor is as bad as Christopher Columbus, but it’s not a good look for either of them.

Taylor began his forty-year military career in the War of 1812. If you need a refresher on this part of American history too, here’s a snippet. Think of it kind of like the Revolutionary War, Part Deux. The United States and Great Britain were going head-to-head...again. Just about thirty years after the United States declared its freedom, Britain still wasn’t really ready to let go of the reins. At the time, Britain was the greatest naval power in the world and was willing to do whatever it would take to stop the US from gaining power on the world stage. Britain fought to curtail the westward expansion of the United States and cut off its trade with other nations. Against all odds, the US won the war, ultimately inspiring Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

He also starred in the Mexican-American War. This oft-forgotten war lasted from 1846 to 1848 and ultimately claimed one-third of Mexico’s land. Funny how we don’t know much about the wars that ended in the US seizing other people’s lands. Anyway, his long, illustrious career in the military primed him for a popular and successful campaign for presidency. The country voted Zachary Taylor the twelfth president of the United States in 1848.

But not everyone loved Zachary Taylor. Because he didn’t support establishing new US territories as slaveholding states, he had beef with slave supporters. And on the eve of the Civil War, this was an extremely hot-button issue. He even had beef with Nathaniel Hawthorne. After Taylor was elected as president, he and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had been working as a Custom House surveyor in Salem, Massachusetts, became political enemies. Hawthorne eventually lost his job in politics and wrote "The Scarlet Letter" instead.

A strange and sudden illness cut his presidency short when he died in 1850. Taylor reportedly ate nothing but raw vegetables, cherries, and iced milk while attending a ceremony on July 4, 1850, fell ill the following day, and died on July 9, 1850. Although some historians have suspected that an enemy had poisoned him because of his unpopular political views, scientists exhumed the former president’s body in 1991 and found no trace of foul play. Let that be a lesson to not eat too many cherries and milk on a hot day.