115 years ago today: President McKinley shot by Leon Czolgosz

[Retrograde]

9. Czolgosz, just like it's spelled

Of course, it helps that I grew up on Buffalo's East Side, which was almost 100% Polish back then and we were taught to read Polish in the Catholic schools. Polish is very phonetic - it's just that the letters it uses to represent the sounds aren't the same as English uses. "cz" is a hard ch, as in church; "sz" is a slightly hard sh, as in sure. And it's not nearly as tricky as, say, Szczodrowska, the name of one of my g-grandmothers.

My grandmother always claimed that Czolgosz stayed with my grandfather's brother's godfather when he was in Buffalo. My grandmother did not let facts get in the way of a good story.