NEWTON'S LAW: TIME MAY INDEED LOVE A HERO, BUT THIS MUCH TIME IS ABSURD

I recently saved then promptly lost an article concerning fresh research into the death of Vincent Van Gogh. According to the discovery, Van Gogh took his life in 1890 not out of chronic loneliness, as was generally believed, but in a depression over his brother Theo's venereal disease.

A historian came to this conclusion after studying various documents and hospital records of the time. Since Van Gogh has gone into that starry night for more than a century, and since details provided in this article are now carelessly misplaced, it's hard to decipher the possibilities of these findings.

While Van Gogh turns a pretty penny these days, his post-impressionistic gifts were largely unappreciated while he was still drawing breath. What sustenance he was able to manage in those years came from the largess of Theo, a successful art dealer.

Artists have done sillier things than end their lives distraught over a business manager's bad moves. While many don't take their suffering to that extreme, Van Gogh was stuck for a topper to that strange business with his ear.

For better of worse, historians never seem to tire of reinterpreting the past, taking what is known, what is conjecture and, in rare cases, what is newly found and shaking it around one more time.

Certainly, there is no groundswell among Van Gogh's Dutch ancestors for reexamining the artistic or neurotic motives of a suicide. For the historian, however, it provides a bit of limelight and perhaps a few bucks in royalties.

This sort of thing isn't quaintly European. An American news story has emerged this week that involves a kindred sort of historical rewriting. And if Zachary Taylor isn't the Van Gogh of presidents, his peculiar and posthumous story has at least piqued some interest.

Why are these old bones of Zachary Taylor being resurrected and scrutinized? With 141 years of afterlife on his resume, Taylor shouldn't be enjoying such celebrity these days.

Proving the power of the pen and a well-spouted line, a writer named Clara Rising got the 12th president exhumed from his resting place near Louisville. His remains were taken to a laboratory where the former Mr. Taylor was tested for poisonous substances.

The death of Taylor has always seemed an unsatisfactory end to a presidential term. Historians have generally agreed that the 65-year-old president attended sweltering Independence Day celebrations in Washington in 1850, returned to the White House, consumed large quantities of iced cherries and iced milk, and died five days later of gastroenteritis.

Those were days when people often didn't survive unusual ailments, so, given the context of the times, it doesn't seem so far-fetched that Taylor would expire from an upset stomach.

By this same token, a belated conspiracy theory shouldn't be automatically discounted as fantasy. Rising contends that Taylor's death had all the markings of arsenic poisoning. If tests show a toxic presence, history would have to be rewritten to proclaim Taylor, and not Lincoln, as America's first assassinated president.

In addition, a political murder mystery would be opened that could make grassy knoll proponents look like pikers.

Still, this story might have more front page appeal if the president involved had a bit more historic sex appeal. From a viewpoint of the 1990s, Zachary Taylor is not exactly Mt. Rushmore material; he served 16 months in office and died of a bellyache, the type of career that gets you a capital statue but on a bad street corner.

In fact, Taylor was the Schwarzkopf of his day, a hero of the war with Mexico whose popularity was so considerable that he nearly had the presidency thrust upon him.

They say time loves a hero. In this case, skeptics took their time in deciding this hero might have been murdered.

Watch out, Millard Fillmore. They might be digging you up to check your fingerprints.