Seven days after suffering a "physical collapse" following a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson has a catastrophic stroke at the White House, leaving him physically and mentally incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency.

Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functioning properly.

The Pueblo speech was an address in favor of the League of Nations, given by US President Woodrow Wilson on the afternoon of September 25, 1919, in Pueblo, Colorado. It was the last of a series of speeches he gave advocating American entry into the League of Nations. In front of a crowd of over 3,000 people, Wilson delivered a speech that was over 6,100 words long. Shortly afterwards, he collapsed and the tour was prematurely ended. The speech is sometimes considered to have been a moving performance, but has also been noted for its attacks on "hyphenated Americans". The historian John Milton Cooper deemed it "the closing lines of one of the greatest speaking careers in American history."

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.

The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800 when the national capital was moved from Philadelphia. "The White House" is also used as a metonym to refer to the Executive Office of the President of the United States.