President Harding was a newspaper publisher and editor; George Washington refused toaccept his presidential salary; Grover Cleveland was a hangman; Andrew Johnson is the only tailor ever to be a US President; James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other hand simultaneously; Nixon and Harding were Poker players; Jimmy Carter was first president to be born in a hospital; Woodrow Wilson is the only president to hold a doctorate degree, making him the highest educated head of state in US history
LAHORE: Since the office of the President of the United States of America was established in 1789, 44 people----all males---have served as country’s heads of state to date.
Of the individuals elected as president, four died in office of natural causes (William Henry Harrison, Zachery Taylor, Warren Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
Four US Presidents were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John Kennedy). One President (Richard Nixon) had to relinquish in the aftermath of Watergate scandal.
With academic help from sources such as the Huffington Post, historian Paul Boller’s 2007 book “Presidential diversion: Presidents at play from George Washington to George W. Bush,” Sid Frank and Arden Davis Melick’s 1977 book “The Presidents: Tidbits and trivia,” Webb Garrison’s 2000 book “Love, lust, and longing in the White House,” James McPherson’s book “To the best of my ability: The American Presidents,” Michael Nelson’s book “The Presidency: A to Z. Washington DC” and Carter Smith’s book “Presidents: Every question answered,” here follow some interesting facts about all the American Presidents to date:
The only president to be unanimously elected was George Washington (1732-1799). He also refused to accept his presidential salary, which was $25,000 a year.
George Washington never lived in the White House. The capital was actually located in Philadelphia and other cities when Washington was president. He is also the only president who didn’t represent a political party. George Washington made the shortest inauguration speech on record—133 words uttered in less than two minutes.
George Washington didn’t have enough money to get to his own inauguration so he had to borrow $600 from his neighbour.
Gerald Ford was the first person to be both vice president and president without being elected by the people. He was appointed vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned and he succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned.
Washington, Jackson, Van Buren, Taylor, Fillmore, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Cleveland, and Truman did not attend college. Harry Truman is the only twentieth-century president without a college degree.
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) holds the record for the longest inauguration speech in history of 8,578 words and delivered in one hour and 40 minutes. Unfortunately, he gave the speech during bad weather and a month later, he was dead from pneumonia, making his term the shortest on record.
George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford were all Freemasons, many symbols of which are found on American currency. Lincoln was the only presidential candidate who was not a Freemason in the 1860 election.
Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was the only president in history to hold the job of a hangman. He was once the sheriff of Erie County, New York, and twice had to spring the trap at a hanging.
Cleveland is the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. He was the 22nd and 24th president.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were once arrested together for taking a carriage ride in the countryside of Vermont on a Sunday, which violated the laws of that state.
James Madison (1751-1836) was the shortest president of the United States, standing at only 5’4”. He never weighed more than 100 pounds.
Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams once traveled to Shakespeare’s birthplace. While there, they took a knife to one of Shakespeare’s chairs so they could take home some wood chips as souvenirs.
Andrew Johnson is the only tailor ever to be president. As president, he would typically stop by a tailor’s shop to say hello. He would wear only the suits that he made himself. Johnson was the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives; however he was acquitted by one vote by the Senate. It was 131 years after this impeachment that another president, Bill Clinton, was impeached by the House of Representatives. Clinton too was acquitted by the Senate.
James Abram Garfield (1831-1881) is the first president to ever talk on the phone. When he spoke to Alexander Graham Bell, who was at the other end 13 miles away, he said: “Please speak a little more slowly.” James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other hand simultaneously.
Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was reportedly involved in over 100 duels, most to defend the honour of his wife, Rachel. He had a bullet in his chest from an 1806 duel and another bullet in his arm from a bar room fight in 1813 with Missouri senator Thomas Benton.
Herbert Hoover was an orphan whose first job was picking bugs off potato plants, for which he was paid a dollar per hundred bugs. He also was a mine worker.
Herbert Hoover moved his family to China before becoming President, and he and his wife learned to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently. They would speak the language around the White House to prevent others from understanding them.
The 29th US President Warren Harding (1865-1923) was the first-ever head of state to be involved in a sex scandal with a young girl, Nan Britton. On one occasion, secret service agents had to stop his wife from beating down the White House closet door.
President Harding was obsessed with poker and once betted an entire set of priceless White House china and lost it.
Warren Harding was the first president to own a radio, the first to make speech over the radio, and the first to ride to his inauguration in a car. When women got the right to vote, he was the first president they could elect.
Harding was a newspaper publisher and editor.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington DC. Jefferson was convinced that if he soaked his feet in a bucket of cold water every day, he’d never get a cold.
The term “O.K.” derives from President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) who was known as “Old Kinderhook” because he was raised in Kinderhook, New York. “O.K.” clubs were created to support Van Buren’s campaigns.
After President Bush Sr. vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister on January 8, 1992, a new word entered the Japanese language. ‘Bushusuru’ means “to do the Bush thing,” or to publicly vomit.
Martin Van Buren was the first to be a United States citizen. All previous presidents were born British subjects. When Buren wrote his autobiography after serving as president from 1837-1841, he didn’t mention his wife of 12 years. Not even once.
Six presidents were named James: Madison, Monroe, Polk, Buchanan, Garfield, and Carter.
Ulysses Grant (1822-1885) smoked at least 20 cigars a day. He later died of throat cancer. He was once given a $20 speeding ticket for riding his horse too fast down a Washington street.
President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) was the only president to serve in both World War I and World War II. Eisenhower had an affair with his wartime driver, Kay Summersby (1908-1975). Kay later wrote a book called “Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower,” in which she claims he was impotent.
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) was the first president to visit all 50 states and the first to visit China. He is the only president to resign.
While in the Navy, Richard Nixon noticed that his friends were winning money in poker games. Always the opportunist, Nixon had the best poker player in his unit teach him how to play the game. Within only a few months, Nixon had won around $6,000 in poker games, which he used to fund his first congressional campaign.
James Earl “Jimmy” Carter (born 1924) was the first president to be born in a hospital.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is the only U.S. president who was also a licenced bartender. He was co-owner of Berry and Lincoln, a saloon in Illinois State. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to ever be photographed at his inauguration. In the photo, he is standing near John Wilkes Booth, his future assassin.
Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Lincoln is the only man in US history known to have witnessed the assassinations of three different presidents, his father, James Garfield, and William McKinley. After he saw anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoot McKinley, he vowed he would never again appear in public with an incumbent president.
Lincoln is the only president to receive a patent (# 6469). He was the first president to have a beard, at the request from a little girl named Gracie Bedell. The first child to die in the White House was Abraham Lincoln’s 12-year old son, Willie.
Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president at 6' 4.
President James Buchanan (1791-1868) quietly but consistently bought slaves in Washington, D.C., and then set them free in Pennsylvania. Buchanan is the only bachelor president. He was virtually inseparable from William R. King (1786-1853), a senator from Alabama, earning the pair the nickname “Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy” and “Mr. Buchanan and his wife.
Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964) gave his White House servants strict orders to hide from him whenever he passed by. Those who failed to do so were at risk of being fired.
John Tyler (1790-1862) had more children than any other president. He had eight by his first wife and seven by his second. He was 70 when his last child, Pearl, was born. He was also the first president to get married in office, though his eight children form his first wife did not approve of the wedding and did not attend. During his presidency, Tyler often played violin at parties to entertain guests at the White House, and he actually aspired to be a concert violinist.
The body of John Scott Harrison, father of President of Benjamin Harrison, was stolen by grave robbers and sold to Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati for use as a training cadaver. The body was eventually recovered and reburied.
The youngest president was Teddy Roosevelt who became president at age 42 when McKinley (1843-1901) was assassinated. Kennedy was the youngest president elected at the age of 43.
As a young man, President Rutherford Hayes (1822-1893) fought “lyssophobia” or the fear of going insane. Rutherford Hayes banished alcohol from the White House and played spiritual songs every night in the White House.
Three US presidents died on July 4th: Thomas Jefferson (1826), John Adams (1826), and James Monroe (1831). Calvin Coolidge is the only president to have been born on the Fourth July (1872). July 4 marks the Independence Day of the United States.
Gerald Ford worked as a model during college. He also worked as a forest ranger at Yellowstone National Park directing traffic and feeding bears.
Weighing 325 pounds, William Howard Taft (1857-1930), who was dubbed “Big Bill,” was the largest president in American history and often got stuck in the White House bathtub. His advisors had to sometimes pull him out.
After leaving office, William Taft became the only ex-president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, effectively becoming the only person to serve as the head of two branches of government. In doing so, he swore in both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to the presidency.
The first attempt to assassinate a president was on Andrew Jackson by Richard Lawrence, a house painter. Both of his guns misfired, however—an event that statisticians say could occur only once in 125,000 times. Andrew Jackson then chased Lawrence with his walking stick.
James Garfield didn’t die of the gunshot wounds from his assassin’s gun; he died of blood poisoning after doctors and experts (including Alexander Graham Bell) tried to remove the bullet from his back with their dirty fingers and instruments, causing him to linger in pain for 80 days before dying. His assassin, Charles Guiteau, later claimed that he didn’t kill the president, the doctors had.
During his second run for presidency, Teddy Roosevelt was shot by a would-be assassin while giving a speech in Milwaukee. He continued to deliver his speech with the bullet in his chest.
President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) would paint his golf balls black during the winter so he could continue playing in the snow.
To date, Wilson is the only president to hold a doctorate degree, making him the highest educated president in the history of the United States. He was awarded the degree in Political Science and History from Johns Hopkins University. He also passed the Georgia Bar Exam despite not finishing law school.
Teddy Roosevelt’s last request before dying was “Please put out the light.” Thomas Jefferson’s last words were “This is the Fourth?” John Adam’s dying words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” unaware that Jefferson had passed away a few hours earlier.
John Adams' campaign propaganda against Jefferson said that if Jefferson was elected, “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practised.” They later resolved their differences and wrote many letters to each other.
Calvin Coolidge liked to have his head rubbed with petroleum jelly while eating his breakfast in bed. Every so often, Calvin Coolidge would press all the buttons on the President’s desk and hide and watch his staff run in. He would then pop out from behind the door and say that he was just seeing if everyone was working.
William McKinley was the first to ride a self-propelled vehicle—the electric ambulance that took him to the hospital after he had been shot.
Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to be president, the first Boy Scout to become president, and the first president to be born in the twentieth century.
President Chester Arthur owned over 80 pairs of trousers. He often took late night strolls around Washington DC with friends, not returning home until 3 or 4 in the morning.
President Benjamin Harrison was the sitting president when electricity was first installed in the White House. However, he was scared of being electrocuted and refused to touch the light switches.
Before becoming the President of the United States of America, Harry Truman owned a haberdashery business (a men’s outfitter), which went bankrupt in 1921.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921. He became the 32nd US president in 1933, and was the only president to be elected four times.