Roger Tubby (33 days) and Jake Siewert (111 days) were post-election fill-ins under lame-duck presidents — Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, respectively.

Jonathan Daniels (19 days) had just taken over for the iron man of press secretaries, Stephen T. Early (4,403 days), when Franklin Roosevelt died in office. Harry Truman briefly brought back Early on an interim basis before naming his own press secretary, Charles Ross.

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Jerald terHorst (30 days) was Gerald Ford's pick after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. When Ford pardoned Nixon for all Watergate-related crimes, terHorst quit in protest.

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James Brady (69 days) was shot in the head during an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. He survived but never returned to the post.

Spicer would have had to hang in for significantly longer to move to seventh on the list. The next-shortest tenure for any other press secretary belongs to George Reedy, who served Lyndon Johnson for 476 days. The 30 press secretaries who preceded Spicer served an average of 1,062 days — almost three years.

As can be seen from the chart below, Spicer is an extreme outlier, especially when you consider that the cause of his departure is not the end of a presidency, an assassination attempt or Watergate.