Culture

Your Presidential Challenge Answers

How Well Did You Do?

So how well do you think you did on the ThinkFives Fun Fact Presidential Challenge?

Well, wait no longer, here are the answers.

In honor of President’s Day we’ve put together some of our favorite fun facts about presidents:

Presidential Record Setters

  • William Henry Harrison died just 32 days after becoming president. He passed away from a cold he got while standing in the rain giving his inauguration speech.
  • Ten presidents weren’t reelected.  The first was the second president, John Adams.
  • Martin Van Buren was the first president to be born as a citizen of the United States. The US did not exist when all previous presidents were born.
  • John Tyler had 15 children.  Poor Letitia Christian Tyler.
  • John Adams and John Quincy Adams did not own slaves. John Adams said that the Revolution would never be complete until the slaves were free. Thomas Jefferson owned the most (about 600) and Zachary Taylor was the last to own slaves. Ulysses S Grant owned slaves before the Civil War.

Presidents of a Feather

  • John Adams died on the same day as Thomas Jefferson, July 4th, 1826. This day was also the 50th anniversary of the approval of the Declaration of Independence!  James Monroe, our 5th president, also died on the 4th of July five years later.
  • Two Presidents won Grammy awards. Bill Clinton won two Grammys for audio books (but not for his sax playing). Barack Obama won in 2006 for his voice on the audio book, Dreams From My Father (although he could have been nominated for the wonderful rendition of Amazing Grace in 2015).
  • More presidents, eight in all, have been from Virginia than any other state. The first was George Washington and the last was Woodrow Wilson.
  • James Madison and George Washington are the only presidents who signed the Constitution.
  • Of America’s 43 presidents, 12 have been former generals.  George Washington was the first and Dwight Eisenhower was the most recent.

Could You Recognize These?

  • John F. Kennedy was the youngest to be elected president at 42 years, 10 months, Joe Biden was the oldest at 78 years, 61 days. Technically Teddy Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President when he assumed office after the death of William McKinley.
  • James Madison was the shortest president at 5 feet 4 inches and Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president at 6 feet 4 inches tall.
  • There have been several presidents who were redheaded – if only in their youth for some.  George Washington was the first redhead and even powdered his hair white when he was younger.
  • In honor of his stepfather, in 1935 at the age of 22, Leslie Lynch King, Jr. legally changed his name to Gerald Rudolph Ford, adopting the more-common spelling of his middle name.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t have to change her last name when she married FDR because they were distant cousins. Her uncle and his cousin “Teddy” Roosevelt walked her down the aisle.

The Modern World

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to appear on television during a 1939 broadcast from the World’s Fair.
  • John F. Kennedy — along with future president Richard Nixon —  participated in the first televised presidential debates.
  • Richard Nixon had a private bowling alley installed in the White House.
  • Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate degree in education, has taught for more than three decades at a public high school, a psychiatric hospital for adolescents, and community colleges.
  • The first president born outside of the 48 contiguous states was Barack Obama who was born in Hawaii (not Kenya).

Elections

  • George Washington was the only president unanimously elected with all 69 electoral votes.
  • When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President. When Nixon resigned the next year, Ford became President and Nelson Rockefeller was appointed Vice President.
  • In 1800 – Thomas Jefferson was elected President by one vote in the House of Representatives after a tie in the Electoral College.  Jefferson did much better in 1804, winning 164-14.
  • While Joe Biden is the 46th president, there are only 45 people who have been president. Grover Cleveland is counted twice as our 22nd and 24th president because he was elected for two nonconsecutive terms.
  • Ronald Reagan won 525 of the 538 electoral votes, the most of any presidential candidate in U.S. history.

Other Resources

1 comment

  1. I got 16/25 I was surprised to find that 12 were generals, I knew Washington was but Eisenhower was a new fact for me

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