Monday, February 20, 2012

Presidential Trivia in Honor of Presidents Day

DID YOU KNOW . . .

George Washington's "wooden teeth" were actually made of walrus tusks.

PRESIDENTS LINCOLN, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy were assassinated in office.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS were made on the lives of Jackson, T. Roosevelt, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G. H. W. Bush, Clinton, and G. W. Bush.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the only presidents to sign the Declaration of Independence, and they both died on its 50th anniversary, July 4, 1826.

James Madison was the first president to wear trousers rather than knee breeches.

James Monroe, like Adams and Jefferson, also died on the 4th of July, but in 1831.

John Quincy Adams was the only president elected to the House after his presidency.

Andrew Jackson was the first president to ride in a train.

Martin Van Buren and his wife spoke Dutch at home.

William Henry Harrison served only thirty days in office before dying of pneumonia.

Several American presidents had no formal education, including Washington, Jackson, Taylor, Fillmore, Lincoln, Johnson, and Cleveland.

Eisenhower was a skilled chef, and the first president licensed to fly an airplane.

Franklin Pierce memorized his entire inaugural speech. (3,319 words).

Rutherford B. Hayes was the first president to use a phone. His phone number was "1".

Theodore Roosevelt
was the youngest person ever to be president.

John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961.

Gerald Ford held his daughter's high school prom in The White House.

Jimmy Carter
was the first of the presidents to be born in a hospital.

George Bush survived four plane crashes during WWII.

Barack Obama dislikes ice cream after working in an ice cream parlor as a teen.

I borrowed the facts above from this blog and this blog.

3 comments:

Dru said...

Thanks. I love president trivia.

Elizabeth Zelvin said...

I knew some of these, but the one that caught my attention is that it seems every past president from FDR on except Johnson has been a target. I don't like what that says about the times we live in.

Julia Buckley said...

You're welcome, Dru! So do I. :)

Liz, it is scary, although who knows what intrigues happened in the past that were never even discovered? I think the game of politics is scary, because leaders are always targets.