Presidential Oddities

  1. George Washington
    did not chop down his father's cherry tree.
    (That was a lie told by Parson Weems to teach kids not to lie.)
  2. John Adams
    entered Harvard at age fifteen.
  3. Thomas Jefferson
    was a redhead.
  4. James Madison
    was married to Dolly Madison.
  5. James Monroe
    was the shortest president, at 5'4".
  6. John Quincy Adams
    liked to go skinny-dipping in the Potomac River.
  7. Andrew Jackson
    was born in
    • Augusta County, West Virginia,
    • Berkeley County, West Virginia,
    • Union County, North Carolina,
    • York County, Pennsylvania,
    • Waxhaw, South Carolina,
    • England,
    • Ireland,
    • and at sea,
    according to various claims.
  8. Martin Van Buren
    is the only president with a two-word last name.
  9. William Henry Harrison
    had the shortest term (one month).
  10. John Tyler
    was playing games with his children when he found out he was the president.
  11. James Knox Polk
    was the least conspicuous man to be nominated for president.
  12. Zachary Taylor
    was not sworn in until one day after Polk stepped down.
    (The official substitute was David Rice Atchison, senate president pro tem.)
  13. Millard Fillmore
    gambled only once, when he won a turkey raffle at age fifteen.
  14. Franklin Pierce
    was a school buddy of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
  15. James Buchanan
    was nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other.
  16. Abraham Lincoln
    was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Just kidding!
  17. Andrew Johnson
    was the first president impeached.
  18. Hiram Ulyssess Grant
    quit drinking when he became president.
  19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes
    was married to "Lemonade Lucy," who would not allow alcohol in the White House.
  20. James Abram Garfield
    could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other.
  21. Chester Alan Arthur
    was always dressed in the latest fashions.
  22. (Stephen) Grover Cleveland
    was the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms.
  23. Benjamin Harrison
    was the only president whose grandfather (Wm.H.) was also a president.
  24. (Stephen) Grover Cleveland
    was the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms. (Deja vu!)
  25. William McKinley
    has the continent's tallest mountain as his namesake.
  26. Theodore Roosevelt
    said he never would have been president if not for his time in North Dakota.
  27. William Howard Taft
    was a Supreme Court Justice after being president.
  28. (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
    was president of Princeton University.
  29. Warren Gamaliel Harding
    died in office under mysterious circumstances.
  30. Calvin Coolidge
    held nineteen elected offices during his career.
  31. Herbert Hoover
    was the first president born west of the Mississippi River.
  32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
    had the longest stay in office, winning four elections.
  33. Harry S Truman
    had no middle name, just an initial.
  34. Dwight David Eisenhower
    once tackled Jim Thorpe in a West Point football game against Carlisle.
  35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
    is the subject of 1010 (or so) assassination conspiracy theories.
  36. Lyndon Baynes Johnson
    was from a town named after his family.
  37. Richard Milhous Nixon
    shook hands with Elvis!
  38. Gerald Rudolph Ford
    was never elected president or vice president.
  39. James Earl Carter
    saw a UFO.
  40. Ronald Wilson Reagan
    was a movie star before he was president.
  41. George Herbert Walker Bush
    shook hands with me, as did his vice president.
  42. William Jefferson Blythe Clinton
    married "the smartest woman in the world."
  43. George Walker Bush
    formó un grupo de socios que compró la franquicia del béisbol de los Texas Rangers.
  44. Barack Hussein Obama
    was African-American, i.e. his father was African and his mother was American.