Millard Fillmore's birthday was January 7. He served only 17 months as vice president before his boss, Zachary Taylor - a slave-owner from Louisiana and a hero of the Mexican-American war - suddenly expired. He died either from poison, possibly by fellow slave owners concerned that Taylor might sell them out, or he died from a stomachache after ingesting too much iced milk and cherries. Nobody really knows. They exhumed Taylor's body in 1991 to perform tests but the lab results were inconclusive.
Fillmore went on to be one of America's most forgettable presidents. He presided at a time when the debate over the future shape of slavery was particularly ugly. The compromises he oversaw, including the odious Fugitive Slave Act, probably kept the Union together for another decade, allowing the North to develop the wealth and industry to defeat the South, but they came at a steep moral cost that did little to burnish his legacy. When Fillmore died in 1874, his last words were reportedly, βThe nourishment is palatable.β