We know them as our commanders-in-chief, leaders who hold executive power, and men who always look academic, dignified, and perfectly presidential in the paintings and photographs that document their lives. But there are some interesting tidbits about these men you probably didn’t hear in history class. To help celebrate President’s Day, here is a list of 25 intriguing facts about our presidents:
• George Washington, the first president, had teeth that were made not from wood, but from bone, hippopotamus ivory, and human teeth. It is possible the human teeth were purchased from enslaved workers on his plantation.
• Thomas Jefferson, the third president, designed his own original tombstone. While the epitaph includes that Jefferson was “The author of the American Declaration of Independence,” it makes no mention of his presidency.
• John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, frequently skinny-dipped in the Potomac River in the early morning hours. He was also one of the first presidents to be photographed. Thankfully, he was fully clothed for that.
• Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, once killed a man in a duel over an argument that started when the man insulted Jackson’s wife, Rachel.
• Martin Van Buren, the eighth president, was the first to be born a U.S. citizen. The presidents before him were considered British subjects.
• William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, died only a month after taking office. In rainy weather, he gave the lengthiest inaugural speech in history, caught pneumonia, and died. His was the shortest presidency in history.
• The 10th president, John Tyler, was born in 1790 when George Washington was still alive. Unbelievably, two of Tyler’s grandsons are still alive today.
• Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? You’re not alone. Millard Fillmore, the 13th president, married his teacher, Abigail Powers.
• James Buchanan, the 15th president, bought slaves in Washington DC and set them free in Pennsylvania.
• In 1860 Abraham Lincoln grew a beard when an 11-year-old girl, Grace Bedell, wrote to him and told him he would stand a better chance of being elected president if he grew “whiskers.” He followed Bedell’s advice and soon after became the 16th president.
• Andrew Johnson, the 17th president, was the first president to be impeached and then acquitted. It would be another 130 years before another president, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton would be impeached. He was also acquitted.
• Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president, was the first to install a phone at the White House. Who was the first person he called? The man who invented the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.
• Multilingual and ambidextrous James Garfield, the 20th president, could write Latin with one hand while writing in Greek with the other.
• Chester Arthur, the 21st president, was a clothes horse. He reportedly owned 80 pairs of pants.
• Teddy Bears are named for Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, because he once refused to shoot a bear his hunting companions tied to a tree.
• Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, loved golf so much that he painted his golf balls black so he could play in the snow.
• Visitors to the White House had to be careful during Herbert Hoover’s administration. The 31st president was known to let his son Allan’s two pet alligators roam around the grounds.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president, was related to 11 other presidents by either blood or marriage.
• John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, donated his presidential salary to charity.
• Gerald Ford, the 38th president, posed for Look Magazine while he was a college student at Yale. It is widely believed that he posed for the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1942.
• James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, the 39th president, was the first president to be born in a hospital.
• Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, is credited with saving 77 lives during the seven summers he worked as a lifeguard.
• George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president, learned the hard way not to attend an event when he had the flu. Despite his doctor’s orders, he went to an important dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister and proceeded to vomit and pass out at the dining table.
• George W. Bush, the 43rd president, acted as head cheerleader for the football team when he was in high school.
• Barack Obama, the 44th and current president, won Grammys in 2005 and 2007 in the Spoken Word Album category for his books, “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”
Janeen Lewis is a freelance journalist and presidential history buff. She has been published in “Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide” and “GreenPrints: The Weeder’s Digest.”
Quiz your knowledge
Here are some of the presidents’ most memorable quotes. Who said each of the following?
1. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
2. “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
3. “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency — even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.”
4. “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
5. “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
6. “ … That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
7. “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
8. “I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”
9. “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
10. “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
Answers:
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Ronald Reagan
4. George H.W. Bush
5. John F. Kennedy
6. Abraham Lincoln
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. Woodrow Wilson
9. George Washington
10. James Madison
