President’s Day Trivia

This year President’s Day comes smack dab in the middle of a very interesting presidential campaign. Today I suggest we put politics aside and have a little fun for President’s Day.  Here are some random little pieces of presidential trivia.  Enjoy!

• Barack Obama is our 44th president, however there have only been 43 presidents. Grover Cleveland was elected for two nonconsecutive terms and is counted twice as both as our 22nd and 24th president.
• Abraham Lincoln was the tallest of the U.S. presidents, measuring 6’ 4” tall.
• Only one president, James Garfield, was a preacher.
• James Buchanan was the only president never to marry.
• Ronald Reagan was the only divorced president.
• George Washington is the only president elected unanimously as he received all 69 Electoral College votes.
• President John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his collection of essays, Profiles in Courage.
• Virginia is the birthplace of more United States presidents than any other state, followed by Ohio and Massachusetts.
• On February 22nd of almost every year since 1888, Washington’s Farewell Address has been read in the US Senate. If you have not read it go here and take a few minutes to read this excellent speech.
• Jefferson and Adams were the only presidents to sign the Declaration of Independence and they both died on its 50th anniversary on July 4, 1826.
• William Howard Taft is the only President who served as both President and Chief Justice of the United States.
• The “S” in Harry S. Truman’s name isn’t short for anything. President Truman was named after both of his grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young and the initial honors them both.
• George H.W. Bush played first base on the Yale University baseball team that twice reached the finals of the College World Series.

No matter who you vote for this year remember the words of Thomas Jefferson who said “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”  Amen and amen!