Facts About The Presidents
President Taft weighed 352 pounds.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4th, Jefferson and Adams died at practically the same minute of the same day.
Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States, was the first to be born a citizen of the United States. He was born in 1782, six years after the signing of the Constitution.
In 1824, Andrew Jackson received more popular votes than John Adams, yet lost the election. The vote was so close that neither candidate received a majority of the electoral votes. The decision then went to the House of Representatives, which elected Adams.
President Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. He hired someone to enter the service in his place, for which he was ridiculed by his political opponent, James G. Blaine. It was soon discovered, however, that Blaine had done the same thing himself.
For his entire forty-seven years in government, Herbert Hoover turned over each of his Federal salary checks to charity. He had become independently wealthy before entering politics.
George Washington's face was badly scarred from small-pox.
Theodore Roosevelt became president at the age of forty-two. He was the youngest president ever to hold office.
William Howard Taft is the only man ever to have been both chief justice and president of the United States.
In 1920 Socialist Eugene Debs received 920,000 votes for president of the United States. Yet he ran his entire campaign while in jail.
In 1976 President Gerald R. Ford sent out 40,000 Christmas cards.
Theodore Roosevelt was Eleanor Roosevelt's uncle.
President John Tyler had fifteen children.
At the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 four future presidents were in attendance: Benjamin Harrison, Chester Alan Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield.
Zachary Taylor, twelfth president of the United States, did not vote until he was sixty-two. He did not even vote in his own election. Taylor, a professional soldier, lived in so many places during his life that he was unable to establish a legal residence until he retired.
Gerald Ford was one of the members of the Warren Commission appointed to study the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Theodore Roosevelt's wife and mother both died on the same day.
James Buchanan was the only United States president never to marry. During his term in office, his niece Harriet lane played the role of First Lady.
George Washington left no direct descendants. Though his wife Martha had four children by a previous marriage, Washington never sired a child to continue his line.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most popular president ever to hold office in the United States, did not carry his home of county of Dutchess, New York, in any of his four elections.
John F. Kennedy and Warren harding were the only United States presidents to be survived by their fathers.
President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20. President Franklin Pierce was arrested while in office for running over an old woman with his horse, but the case was dropped for insufficient evidence in 1853.
Norfolk County, Massachusetts, is the birthplace of three United States presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and John F. Kennedy.
Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, was present at the assassinations of three presidents: his father's, President Garfield's, and President McKinley's. After the last shooting, he refused ever to attend a state affair again.
George Washington was not the first president of the United States. The first president was John Hanson, Maryland's representative at the Continental Congress. On November 5, 1781, Hanson was elected by the Constitutional Congress to the office of “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.” He served for one year.
A man named David Rice Atchison was president of the United Sates for one day and didn't know it. According to a nineteenth-century law, if neither the president nor the vice-president was in office, the president pro tem of the Senate became chief executive. On March 4, 1849, President James Knox Polk's term had lapsed, and the newly elected Zachary Taylor could not yet be sworn in (it was a Sunday). So for one day Atchison was president. It was not until several months later that Atchison learned of this, as the law was then an obscure one. It has since been changed.
When Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession passed Ford's Theater, where Lincoln had been shot, one of the cornices fell off the building. When John Wilkes Booth leaped into the stage after shooting the President, he tripped—on the American flag. A short time before his assassination Lincoln dreamed he was going to die, and he related his dream to the Senate.
On New Year's Day, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt shook hands with 8,513 people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday is a legal holiday in the Virgin Islands.
The teddy bear was named for Theodore Roosevelt. When presented with a koala from Australia, Roosevelt, whose fondness for animals was well known, so praised the creature that a copy of it was made for children. Called the “teddy bear” in the President's honor, the toy soon caught on and became a standard item on every child's shelf.
Grover Cleveland is the only United States President to have been married in the White House.
James Madison, 5 feet, 4 inches tall, was the shortest president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was the tallest at 6 feet, 4 inches.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson's wife grazed sheep on the front lawn of the White House.