Video: 'Zachary Taylor | President's Day | Kentucky Life | KET'

(Tuesday, July 9, 1850, 10:35 p.m local time) — Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States since March 4, 1849, died tonight in the White House of gastroenteritis.

Taylor was succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore, who would formally take the presidential oath of office the following day at noon in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

On July 4, 1850, Taylor, who was 65, reportedly consumed copious amounts of raw fruit and iced milk while attending Independence Day holiday celebrations during a fund-raising event at the Washington Monument, which was then under construction.

Video: 'Life Portrait Zachary Taylor'

Over the course of several days, Taylor became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment. His doctor “diagnosed the illness as cholera morbus, a flexible mid-nineteenth-century term for intestinal ailments as diverse as diarrhea and dysentery but not related to Asiatic cholera,” the latter being a widespread epidemic at the time of Taylor’s death.

Taylor was the second president to die in office, preceded by William Henry Harrison, who died while serving as president nine years earlier.