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Executive Expose:
Fascinating & Fun
Facts about our
Presidents By Janeen Lewis
Presidential race
heating up with
andidates eager
to share their
views. It’s up to
voters to gather
he facts in order
cast an educated
at the polls. One
al hopeful will
soon make history. For now, in honor of
President’s Day (February 15, 2016), we’re
reflecting back on some rather intriguing
facts about our past presidents.
1. Chew on this…Our nation’s 1st president, George
Washington, had teeth made from hippopotamus ivory and
other humans’ bone and teeth. It is possible the human teeth
were purchased from enslaved workers on his plantation.
2. Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president, designed his own
tombstone. While the epitaph reads that Jefferson was “The
author of the American Declaration of Independence,” it makes
no mention of his presidency.
3. John Quincy Adams, the 6th president, frequently skinny-
dipped in the Potomac River during the early morning hours.
He was also one of the first presidents to be photographed,
thankfully, while he was fully clothed!
4. Andrew Jackson, the 7th president, once killed a man in a duel
that was provoked when the man insulted Jackson’s wife, Rachel.
5. Martin Van Buren, the 8th president, was the first to be born a
U.S. citizen. The presidents before him were considered British
subjects.
6. William Henry Harrison, the 9th president, died only a month
after taking office – the shortest presidency in history. In rainy
weather, he gave the lengthiest inaugural speech in history, then
developed pneumonia and died.
7. The 10th president, John Tyler, was born in 1790 while
George Washington was still alive. Unbelievably, two of Tyler’s
grandsons are still alive today.
8. Hot for teacher? Millard Fillmore , the 13th president, married
his teacher, Abigail Powers.
9. James Buchanan, the 15th president, bought slaves in Washington D.C. and
set them free in Pennsylvania.
10. 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 her advice and soon after
became the 16th president.
11. Andrew Johnson, the 17th president, was the first commander to be impeached
and then acquitted. 130 years passed before another leader, William Jefferson
“Bill” Clinton, the 42nd president, was impeached and acquitted.
12. Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president, was first to install a phone at the
White House. Who was the first person he called? Alexander Graham Bell, the
man who invented the telephone.
13. Multilingual and ambidextrous, James Garfield, the 20th president, could write
Latin with one hand while writing in Greek with the other!
14. Chester Arthur, the 21st president, was a clothes horse. He reportedly owned
80 pairs of pants.
15. Teddy Bears are named after Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, because
he once refused to shoot a bear that his hunting companions had tied to a tree.
16. WoodrowWilson, the 28th president, loved golf so much that he painted golf
balls black so he could see them while playing in the snow.
17. Herbert Hoover, the 31 st president, was known to let his son Allan’s two pet
alligators roam around the grounds.
18. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32 nd president, was related to 11 other
presidents by either blood or marriage.
19. John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, donated his presidential salary to charity.
20 Gerald Ford, the 38 th president, posed for Look Magazine while he was a
college student at Yale. It is widely believed that he also posed for the cover of
Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1942.
21. James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, the 39th president, was the first president born at
a hospital.
22. Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, is credited with saving 77 lives during the
seven summers he worked as a lifeguard.
23. Despite his doctor’s orders, George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41 st president,
attended an important dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister. Because of the
flu, he vomited and fainted at the dining table.
24. George W. Bush, the 43rd president, acted as head cheerleader for the football
team when he was in high school.
25. 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.
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FEATURE
ORLANDO FAMILY MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2016 36