100 Fun Facts About Obscure Presidential

Which president was the first Catholic to hold the office and, at 43, the youngest ever elected?

John F. Kennedy. With some Protestant ministers saying no Catholic could act free of his church, he went to Houston to tell a gathering of them that he did not speak for the church and it did not speak for him.

Which president is the only one who never married?

James Buchanan. His fiancée broke off their engagement over gossip and died within days; her family barred him from the funeral, and he later put his single life down to devotion to her.

Which president was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013?

Donald Trump. At WrestleMania 23 in 2007 he backed the winning wrestler in a 'Battle of the Billionaires' against WWE chairman Vince McMahon, then helped to shave McMahon's head in the ring.

As a law student, Barack Obama made national news when he was elected the first Black president of which publication?

Harvard Law Review. The attention brought Obama a publisher's contract for a book on race relations, and what he wrote instead was the memoir Dreams from My Father.

Which president is the only one to hold a patent, for a device to lift boats over river shoals?

Abraham Lincoln. Boats he worked on as a young man ran aground at least twice, which gave him the idea of inflatable bellows fixed along the hull, but the device was never manufactured.

Which president kept a jar of jelly beans on his desk, a habit that began as a substitute for smoking?

Ronald Reagan wrote to his supplier while governor of California that his team could hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around the jar of jelly beans.

Which president's middle initial stands for no name at all?

Harry S. Truman's 'S' was a compromise that honoured both his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, without choosing between them.

Which president took the oath of office aboard Air Force One, sworn in by a woman judge?

Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes on the plane at Love Field in Dallas, on the afternoon Kennedy was shot; no president before or since has taken the oath on an aircraft.

Which president was the last to wear facial hair in office?

William Howard Taft's moustache left with him in 1913. The nearest thing since was the stubble Harry Truman grew on a Key West holiday after the 1948 election, which he called a 'Jeff Davis'.

Which president was the first to live in the White House?

John Adams moved into its damp, unfinished rooms in November 1800, just before losing that year's election, so he lived there for only about four months.

Which inventor tried to locate the assassin's bullet inside a dying president in 1881 with a metal detector?

Alexander Graham Bell's detector worked in tests but found nothing: the chief doctor let him search only the side where he insisted the bullet lay, and by some accounts the metal bed frame upset the readings.

Which former president became the first to fly in an aeroplane, as a passenger at a St. Louis airfield?

Theodore Roosevelt had left office the year before: in October 1910, while he was campaigning in Missouri, pilot Arch Hoxsey invited him up in a Wright biplane at Kinloch Field.

Which president, born in Kinderhook, New York, grew up speaking Dutch as his first language?

Martin Van Buren was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and the O.K. Clubs his supporters formed in 1840 probably helped spread 'OK', which began a year earlier as a joke abbreviation of 'oll korrect'.

Which president had electricity installed in the White House but feared touching the switches?

Benjamin Harrison's family so feared a shock that the electrician who wired the house in 1891 was kept on to work the switches for them. He stayed on the White House staff for 42 years.

What were John Adams's last words, on 4 July 1826?

'Thomas Jefferson survives' proved wrong: Jefferson died at Monticello that same day, about five hours before Adams, on the Declaration's 50th anniversary.

Which president is credited with inventing the swivel chair?

Thomas Jefferson's revolving Windsor chair was made in Philadelphia, probably to his own design, and by family account he used it while drafting the Declaration of Independence.

Which president operated a whiskey distillery at his estate to supplement his income?

George Washington was talked into it by his Scottish farm manager in 1797. Two years later the stills turned out nearly 11,000 gallons, making the distillery one of the largest in the country.

Which president survived an 1835 assassination attempt at the Capitol when both pistols misfired?

Andrew Jackson, then 67, set about gunman Richard Lawrence with his cane until bystanders wrestled the man down. Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Which president was born with the surname Blythe, three months after his father died in a car crash?

Bill Clinton took his stepfather Roger Clinton's surname in high school, even though Roger was an abusive alcoholic whose rages the boy often had to step in to stop.

Which president memorised lines by Emerson and Yeats to overcome a childhood stutter?

Joe Biden won his Senate seat at 29, too young to take it until his 30th birthday came round. He then commuted home to Delaware by train for 36 years, which earned him the nickname 'Amtrak Joe'.

Which president became one of the Navy's youngest pilots in 1943 and was shot down over Chichijima a year later?

George H. W. Bush bailed out over the ocean and was picked up by an American submarine. He flew 58 combat missions in the war and won the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Which president was sworn in by his own father, a notary public, by the light of a kerosene lamp?

Calvin Coolidge was visiting his father's Vermont farmhouse when word came in the night that Harding had died. He took the oath in the parlour, then went back to bed.

John Tyler was mocked as 'His Accidency' because he was the first to become president in what way?

On a president's death, nobody was sure a vice president truly took over, so opponents wrote to 'Acting President Tyler'. He sent the letters back unopened, and his claim became the rule.

Which former president died in the Capitol in 1848, two days after collapsing on the House floor?

John Quincy Adams, 80 and in his seventeenth year in the House, had just voted 'no' in a debate when he collapsed at his desk. Colleagues carried him to the Speaker's Room, where he died.

What left Theodore Roosevelt nearly blind in his left eye while he was president?

A boxing injury: a young artillery captain caught him on the eye during a White House sparring bout. Roosevelt kept it quiet for years, gave up boxing and took up jiu-jitsu instead.

Which president was called 'His Fraudulency' after a commission awarded him 20 disputed electoral votes?

Rutherford B. Hayes went to bed on election night sure he had lost to Samuel Tilden, who led the popular vote. The commission's ruling then made him president by 185 electoral votes to 184.

Which president was the third to die on the Fourth of July, five years after two of his predecessors?

James Monroe left the presidency deep in debt and, after his wife died, moved to New York City to live with his daughter. He died there on 4 July 1831.

Which material, rather than the wood of legend, went into George Washington's false teeth?

Ivory, human and animal teeth and metal fittings made up his dentures. He had one tooth of his own left when he became president, and his dentist was later allowed to keep it as a memento.

Which president was born with his first and middle names in the opposite order from the one we know?

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born David Dwight, sharing a first name with his father, David. To save confusion the family called him Dwight, and the two names were switched round.

Which president is the only Eagle Scout to have held the office?

Gerald Ford earned the rank as a Michigan teenager in the 1920s. When he died, his family asked for Scouts at the funeral, and Eagle Scouts lined the route of the procession in his honour.

Which president, the only one to earn a PhD, ran Princeton University before entering politics?

Woodrow Wilson tried to abolish Princeton's exclusive eating clubs and was beaten back by the alumni. In 1910 he left to run for governor of New Jersey, and two years later he won the White House.

Which president was head cheerleader in his final year at Phillips Academy, Andover?

George W. Bush led skits mocking rival schools as Andover's head cheerleader in 1963, and he was a cheerleader again at Yale.

Which president, a mining engineer early on, was trapped in China during the Boxer Rebellion?

Herbert Hoover helped to defend the foreign settlement at Tianjin, directing the building of barricades during a month under fire, while his wife Lou nursed the wounded.

Which candy bar did the Curtiss Candy Company insist was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter?

Baby Ruth went on sale in 1921, seventeen years after Ruth Cleveland died and just as Babe Ruth's fame was soaring, so many took the story for a way to avoid paying the ballplayer.

As of 2025, which president was the only one named Time's Person of the Year three times?

Franklin D. Roosevelt first took the title as president-elect in 1932. He went on to win four elections, which led to the constitutional amendment holding his successors to two.

Which president is the only person to have served both as Speaker of the House and as president?

James K. Polk pledged to serve a single term and kept his word. Worn out by the work, he died about three months after leaving office.

Which president was the last to have served in the Civil War, rising from enlisted man to brevet major?

William McKinley was a 19-year-old commissary sergeant at Antietam when, without orders, he took hot coffee and food to the men of his regiment under fire. A monument on the battlefield marks the spot.

Which president filed a formal report of seeing a UFO in 1969?

Jimmy Carter saw the light in the sky before a Lions Club meeting in Leary, Georgia. He wrote up his report four years later, as governor, after a UFO group in Oklahoma asked him for one.

Which president's memoirs did Mark Twain publish on terms that left the dying author's family most of the profits?

Ulysses S. Grant, ruined by a partner's fraud and dying of throat cancer, finished the book only days before his death in 1885. It went on to earn his widow Julia about $450,000.

Which president bought a failing Ohio newspaper, the Marion Star, for $300 as a young man?

Warren G. Harding raised the money with two friends in 1884. The paper became a real success after he married Florence Kling, who took a firm grip on its circulation department.

Which future president personally carried out a hanging as sheriff of Erie County in 1872?

Grover Cleveland could have left the job to a deputy. Despite his misgivings he sprang the trap himself, and he hanged a second murderer a few months later.

Which president from Tennessee was buried wrapped in an American flag with a copy of the Constitution under his head?

Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted by a single vote, yet he returned to the Senate only months before he died, the one former president to serve there.

Zachary Taylor's remains were exhumed in 1991 to test for what?

Arsenic poisoning was the theory of a novelist and former professor, who persuaded officials and Taylor's descendants to allow the tests. Kentucky's medical examiner found only traces and ruled murder out.

Which president is the only sitting House member ever elected to the White House?

James A. Garfield had already been chosen as a senator for Ohio when he won the White House, so he resigned from the House and gave up the Senate seat without ever sitting in it.

Which president became the first to visit Israel while in office, in 1974?

Richard Nixon made the trip in June 1974 on a Middle East tour, with the Watergate scandal closing in on him, and resigned less than two months later.

Where did surgeons secretly remove a tumour from Grover Cleveland's mouth in 1893?

On a friend's yacht, the Oneida, surgeons worked through his mouth so that no scar would show. A reporter who broke the story was discredited by official denials, and was vindicated only when one of the surgeons told all in 1917.

Which president, born in 1790, had a grandson who lived until 2025?

John Tyler was 63 when his son Lyon was born, and Lyon was 75 when his own son was born in 1928. Those two late fatherhoods stretched three generations across 235 years.

Career soldier Zachary Taylor won the presidency in 1848 having never before done what?

Voted is something the career officer had never done, and he had kept his politics to himself as well. Clubs sprang up to make the war hero 'Old Rough and Ready' president, though no one knew for sure where he stood.

Which 1850s president founded the first White House library with his wife Abigail?

Millard Fillmore and Abigail, a former teacher, moved in to find that the mansion had no library. She had him ask Congress for the money, then chose the books herself for an upstairs oval room.

Which New York designer did Chester A. Arthur hire to redecorate a White House he found shabby?

Louis Comfort Tiffany was then the most fashionable designer in New York. Arthur, disgusted by the mansion's shabby look, had him turn it into a showplace, and Congress paid the bill.

Franklin Pierce's vice president, William R. King, took his oath of office in which country?

Cuba was where he had gone in search of a cure for his tuberculosis, too ill to attend the inauguration. He came home to Alabama a few weeks later and died the day after he reached his plantation.

Franklin Pierce broke with tradition at his 1853 inauguration by doing what?

Affirming rather than swearing the oath was only his first surprise. He then delivered his entire inaugural address from memory, without notes, as snow fell on the crowd.

Why did John Tyler rename his Virginia plantation 'Sherwood Forest'?

To signal the Whigs had 'outlawed' him, Tyler borrowed the name of Robin Hood's forest. The party had expelled him while he was president, after he vetoed its bank bills and most of his cabinet resigned.

Which future president was rumoured in 1880 to have been born in Ireland, and then in Canada?

Chester A. Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, but his Irish-born father had lived in Canada, just across the border. A rival lawyer seized on that to argue he was foreign-born and so barred from office.

Which landlocked South American country named a city and a department after the 19th US president?

Paraguay had been ruined by war when Argentina laid claim to its Chaco region as well. Asked to arbitrate in 1878, the president ruled for Paraguay, and the anniversary of his decision is a holiday in the city that bears his name.

Millard Fillmore became the first chancellor of which New York institution in 1846?

University of Buffalo chose a first chancellor who was largely self-taught: he had grown up on a frontier farm and been apprenticed to a cloth maker before he read law.

A recording from around 1889, thought to be the oldest of any US president's voice, was made on what?

A wax phonograph cylinder caught Benjamin Harrison saying that, as president, he had been present at the first Pan-American Congress in Washington. He hoped aloud that 'our two countries' would live side by side in peace.

Which president, the oldest to take office until Ronald Reagan, was the last born a British subject?

William Henry Harrison was born in Virginia in 1773. Three years later his own father signed the Declaration of Independence, renouncing the Crown his son had been born under.

What is Zachary Taylor said to have consumed on a hot July 4, 1850, days before he died?

Cold milk and cherries, taken in quantity after hours in the sun at a Washington Monument ceremony, is the usual account. He died within five days, which cleared the way for the Compromise of 1850, a deal he had firmly opposed.

Which first lady was nicknamed for the lemonade served at her alcohol-free White House?

Lucy Hayes saw wine served at the first state dinner of her husband's term, held for two Russian grand dukes. The ban came soon afterwards, in part because he wanted to keep temperance voters loyal to his party.

Which vegetable did George H. W. Bush dislike so much that he banned it from Air Force One in 1990?

Broccoli had been forced on Bush by his mother when he was a boy, he said, and he was done with it. Growers replied by sending ten tons of it to Washington in trucks.

Which animal swam straight at Jimmy Carter's fishing boat in 1979, inspiring mocking 'killer' headlines?

A swamp rabbit came hissing across a Georgia pond, and Carter splashed it away with his paddle. Reporters heard the story months later and ran with it.

Which animal, sent to Calvin Coolidge to be cooked for Thanksgiving in 1926, became a White House pet named Rebecca?

A raccoon was not a dish Coolidge had ever tried or wanted to, so Rebecca stayed. She got an embroidered collar for Christmas and walked outdoors on a leash.

On what did John F. Kennedy scratch the rescue message for his PT-109 crew, a keepsake later displayed on his desk?

A coconut shell carried Kennedy's plea to an Australian coastwatcher, paddled there by two Solomon Islander scouts. As president he kept it on his Oval Office desk as a paperweight.

Why is Andrew Jackson's pet parrot, Poll, said to have been carried out of his funeral in 1845?

It kept swearing, loud and long, according to a minister who said he was there, and had to be removed from the house. He first told the story 76 years afterwards.

Ronald Reagan played a professor raising which kind of animal like a child in the 1951 comedy Bedtime for Bonzo?

A chimpanzee played Bonzo, the subject of the professor's bid to settle nature versus nurture by teaching an ape human morals. Reports differ on the animal's real name.

Which 1992 film sequel gave Donald Trump a cameo in return for letting the crew shoot inside his Plaza Hotel?

Home Alone 2 filmed in the Plaza's lobby and one of its suites, and its director says the cameo was part of the price. Trump plays himself, pointing Kevin toward the lobby.

Which Major League Baseball team did George W. Bush co-own before he was elected a state governor in 1994?

Texas Rangers control went to an investor group that Bush put together in 1989 for $89 million. His own stake at the start was $500,000.

Lyndon B. Johnson loved to startle guests at his ranch by driving which kind of vehicle straight into a lake?

An amphibious car called the Amphicar, built in Germany, was the only civilian one ever mass-produced. Johnson's was Lagoon Blue, and his passengers got no warning.

Which heavy piece of gym equipment did Herbert Hoover and his aides hurl over a net in a game named after him?

A medicine ball of about six pounds flew over an eight-foot net in Hooverball. The president's physician devised the game to keep him fit.

Which Founding Father was the shortest of all the presidents at 5 feet 4 inches?

James Madison stood exactly one foot shorter than Abraham Lincoln, the tallest man to hold the office.

Which West African country's capital was renamed Monrovia in 1824 in honor of President James Monroe?

Liberia's main settlement took the name while Monroe was still in office. He was a prominent backer of the society that founded the colony as a home for freed Black Americans.

William Howard Taft is the only president who also held which other high office, from 1921 to 1930?

Chief Justice was the office Taft had long sought. Even so, he had earlier turned down repeated offers of a Supreme Court seat, thinking his political work mattered more.

Grover Cleveland remains the only president to have done what inside the White House while in office?

Cleveland got married in the Blue Room in 1886 to Frances Folsom, who at 21 became the youngest first lady in American history. The engagement had been kept secret.

Which animals grazed the White House lawn during Woodrow Wilson's presidency so that no manpower was spent mowing it?

Sheep kept the grass short for the first lady, Edith Wilson, who had set them there. Their wool was auctioned off to raise money for the American Red Cross.

Which card game won Richard Nixon enough money in the Navy to help pay for his first congressional campaign?

Poker, in its five-card stud form, was a game Nixon became very good at during the war. His winnings went into the race that sent him to the House in 1946.

Harry S. Truman co-owned which kind of Kansas City shop, whose failure left him in debt?

A haberdashery, selling men's shirts, ties and hats, was opened on West 12th Street by Truman and Eddie Jacobson. The pair had already run an army canteen at a profit.

Which rail service did Joe Biden ride between Washington and Delaware for 36 years, earning him a nickname?

Amtrak took Senator Biden home to Wilmington so regularly that he became 'Amtrak Joe'. In Congress he argued for more funding and better security for the railway.

Which ice cream chain counts Barack Obama, who scooped cones there at 16, among its former employees?

Baskin-Robbins built its name on 31 flavors, one for each day of the month. Obama later wrote about what the teenage job behind its counter had taught him.

Which award has Bill Clinton won twice, once sharing it with Mikhail Gorbachev and Sophia Loren?

A Grammy went to all three in 2004 for a children's album built around Peter and the Wolf. Clinton won another the next year for reading his own memoir aloud.

Which children's event moved to the White House lawn under Rutherford B. Hayes after Congress banned it at the Capitol?

The Easter Egg Roll had wrecked much of the Capitol's lawn in 1876, so Congress outlawed using the grounds as a playground. Hayes opened his own lawn to it in 1878.

Which golf feature did Dwight D. Eisenhower have built on the White House South Lawn in 1954?

A putting green suited the avid golfer in the Oval Office. Squirrels plagued it so badly that he ordered them trapped and moved away.

Which presidential retreat did Dwight D. Eisenhower rename for his grandson, dropping the earlier name Shangri-La?

Camp David honors both Eisenhower's father and his five-year-old grandson, who shared a first name. Roosevelt had taken 'Shangri-La' from the hidden Himalayan paradise of a 1933 novel.

Which unlikely side job did Gerald Ford take up while he was a law student and football coach at Yale?

A model with the John Robert Powers agency at first, Ford then put money into Harry Conover's new agency and posed for it until 1941.

Andrew Johnson was bound as an apprentice at age ten to which trade, which he practiced in frontier towns?

Tailor work came with an odd schooling: townspeople visited the shop to read aloud to the apprentices as they sewed. Johnson was legally tied to it until he turned 21.

How did the young Abraham Lincoln win a reputation for strength among the rowdy Clary's Grove boys of New Salem?

A wrestling match against the gang's leader, a local champion named Jack Armstrong, cemented Lincoln's place among them. He was known for jumping, throwing and footraces too.

Which gift did admirers shower on Ulysses S. Grant after news reports of his 1862 victory at Fort Donelson?

Cigars poured in after newspapers described Grant winning the battle with one clamped in his teeth. The same fight made him 'Unconditional Surrender' Grant.

What in Theodore Roosevelt's jacket pocket, along with a steel glasses case, slowed an assassin's bullet in 1912?

A folded speech of 50 pages took some of the force, and Roosevelt insisted on delivering it with the bullet in his chest before he would see a doctor.

Which lucky flower did William McKinley take from his lapel and give to a girl shortly before he was shot?

A red carnation was McKinley's trademark good-luck piece, and a 12-year-old in the receiving line asked him for it. Ohio later adopted it as the state flower in his honor.

In which river did President John Quincy Adams take his usual early-morning naked swims?

The Potomac is where the writer Anne Royall, in Washington seeking a pension, is said to have caught Adams during one of his dawn swims.

James K. Polk's surprise nomination in 1844 made him the first presidential candidate known by which racing term?

Dark horse fitted a little-known Tennessee politician who took the Democratic nomination on the ninth ballot, ahead of a host of better-known candidates.

Zachary Taylor's daughter Sarah defied him to marry which young army lieutenant, later a famous Confederate leader?

Jefferson Davis served under Taylor, who did not want his daughter to live as a military wife. The couple wed in 1835, and she died of malaria three months later.

Which novelist, a college friend of Franklin Pierce, wrote the campaign biography for his 1852 presidential run?

Nathaniel Hawthorne met Pierce on the way to Bowdoin College and the two became fast friends. After the election Pierce rewarded him with the consul's post in Liverpool.

James A. Garfield published an original proof of which rule of geometry in 1876, while a congressman?

The Pythagorean theorem falls out of Garfield's proof when the area of a trapezoid is worked out in two different ways. No other president has added anything original to mathematics.

Which farm animals did George Washington begin breeding after the King of Spain sent him a stud in 1785?

Mules, sired by the Spanish donkey he named Royal Gift, were animals Washington believed would revolutionize American farming.

Which animal did Theodore Roosevelt's young sons take up in the White House elevator to cheer a sick brother?

A pony named Algonquin rode up to the bedroom of Archie Roosevelt, who was laid low with measles. His brothers Quentin and Kermit led the animal into the elevator.

Which Airedale terrier of Warren G. Harding had his own hand-carved chair for sitting in on Cabinet meetings?

Laddie Boy also had White House birthday parties with dog-biscuit cake, and newspapers ran mock interviews with him. Newsboys later gave 19,134 pennies to cast his statue.

Chester A. Arthur's nicknames 'Elegant Arthur' and the 'Dude President' poked fun at his fondness for what?

Fine clothes were a taste Arthur had long afforded: as New York's customs collector his income topped $50,000, more than the president's salary at the time.

Which tune that announces the president's arrival began as a boat song in Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake?

Hail to the Chief was set to music around 1812 by a self-taught violinist who conducted a London theatre. In the poem it greets a Highland leader arriving by boat on a loch.

Jimmy Carter, born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924, was the first president to be born in what kind of place?

A hospital birth came naturally in the Carter family: his mother worked as a registered nurse at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, where he was delivered.