The opening line for Theodore Roosevelt was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech:
Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I do not know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.
Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt.
It takes more than that to kill a bull moose, the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued.
Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet, there is where the bullet went through, and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.