Short-lived leadership
While most world leaders usually stick it out for far longer than Liz Truss’ 45 days, some don’t.
Tory George Canning held the office for just 119 days before he died of tuberculosis in 1827. US President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia in 1841, just 31 days after his inauguration. Pedro Lascurain lasted just 45 minutes or so in the Mexican presidency. He was effectively just a placeholder during a military coup in 1913. Michael II of Russia put in a whole 18 hours in mid-March 1917 after the abdication of his brother, Czar Nicholas II, but he was quickly replaced by a provisional government that ended the country’s czarist regime.
Elizabeth II may have held the honour of Britain’s longest reign, but Tragic Lady Jane Grey appears at the other end of the spectrum — the 16-year-old queen lasted just nine days before being deposed in 1553. But the world record of just 20 minutes on the throne is shared by France’s King Louis XIX, who quickly abdicated in 1830 right after his father did the same, and Portugal’s Luis II, who died not a half-hour after he’d assumed the crown from his father, who was fatally wounded in the same attack in 1908.
