100 Fun Facts About Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was born on 6 February 1911 in the small town of Tampico, in which state?

Illinois was home through his childhood, as his salesman father's search for work moved the family from town to town before they settled in Dixon in 1920.

What nickname did Reagan's father give him as a baby, a name he still went by as a young man?

Dutch came from his father's habit of calling his infant son a 'fat little Dutchman', and the name stuck with Reagan well beyond childhood.

Reagan's first paid job as a teenager was as what, on the Rock River near Dixon?

He worked seven summers at Lowell Park and always said one of the proudest statistics of his life was the number of swimmers he pulled out, which he tallied by notching a log.

Which word completes the opening line of Reagan's 1984 campaign ad, 'It's ___ again in America'?

Morning again in America was the ad's promise, and it closed by asking why voters would ever want to return to where they were less than four years before.

Before Hollywood, Reagan worked at WHO radio in Des Moines as a broadcaster for which baseball team?

The Chicago Cubs' games reached the station only as sketchy teletype reports, so he improvised a running account of the action from the studio.

Which Hollywood studio signed Reagan to a contract after a screen test, launching his film career?

Warner Bros. lost him to the Army in April 1942, and poor eyesight kept him out of combat, so he spent the war making training films.

Reagan's nickname 'the Gipper' comes from a 1940 film about which college football coach?

Knute Rockne's halftime plea to 'win one for the Gipper', a request the dying George Gipp supposedly made in 1920, was tied by sportswriters to Notre Dame's 1928 upset of Army.

Which 1942 film, in which Reagan wakes to find his legs amputated, gave his 1965 autobiography its title?

Many critics rated Kings Row his best performance, yet after wartime Army service he struggled to recapture his pre-war popularity.

In Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), Reagan plays a professor raising what as if it were a human child?

A chimpanzee played Bonzo, but weeks after the film's premiere it died in a zoo fire, so the 1952 sequel had to cast another chimp.

Reagan's first marriage, in January 1940, was to which Oscar-winning actress?

Jane Wyman filed for divorce in 1948, and accounts of the split point partly to politics, which absorbed Reagan far more than it did her.

In 1947 Reagan was elected president of which Hollywood organisation?

He testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that year and, it later emerged, was an FBI informant on suspected communists in the union.

Through the 1950s Reagan hosted a TV anthology series and toured plants as a speaker for which company?

General Electric plant tours gave him years of practice speaking against big government, the theme that later carried his political career.

Before turning Republican in 1962, Reagan was a Democrat who admired which president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal gave Reagan's father a job, a debt Reagan still acknowledged long after he turned against Roosevelt's politics.

On behalf of which presidential candidate did Reagan deliver his 1964 'A Time for Choosing' address?

Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide, but the speech raised $1 million for his campaign and launched Reagan's political career.

Reagan won California's governorship in 1966 by defeating which incumbent?

Pat Brown's popularity sagged after the Watts riots and the student protests at Berkeley, which many voters thought he had handled poorly.

Reagan's 1976 bid for the Republican nomination ended in a narrow convention defeat to which sitting president?

It was the last time a major-party convention opened without a settled nominee. Ford went on to lose to Jimmy Carter, and Reagan came back four years later.

Which congressman quit the 1980 Republican race to run as an independent?

John Anderson finished a distant third with less than 7 percent of the vote, drawing support away from both Carter and Reagan.

Which phrase did Reagan use to brush off Jimmy Carter's attack in their October 1980 debate?

'There you go again' returned in 1984, when Walter Mondale turned it on Reagan, claiming he had tried to cut Medicare after the 1980 election.

Which of Reagan's 1980 rivals for the Republican nomination derided his economic plan as "voodoo economics"?

George H. W. Bush had mocked Reagan's tax-cut plans, yet after losing the primaries he became Reagan's running mate.

Reagan's 1981 inauguration was the first held at which part of the Capitol?

The West Front's first inauguration was unusually warm, at 55°F, but four years later bitter cold drove Reagan's second public swearing-in indoors to the Rotunda.

What happened minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president on 20 January 1981?

Iran freed 52 US hostages after 444 days in captivity, and Reagan broke the news to congressional leaders at his inaugural lunch.

On 30 March 1981, Reagan was shot outside which building?

The Washington Hilton hotel shooting left a bullet less than an inch from his heart, yet at first Reagan thought agents had only broken his ribs shoving him into the limousine.

John Hinckley Jr. said he shot Reagan to impress which actress from Taxi Driver?

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982, a verdict that led several states and Congress to rewrite their insanity laws. He was released unconditionally in 2022.

What did Reagan say to Nancy when she reached him at the hospital after the shooting?

'Honey, I forgot to duck.' was not his only joke that day: on the operating table he told the surgeons he hoped they were all Republicans.

Which Reagan aide, permanently disabled in the 1981 shooting, later lent his name to a gun law?

Press secretary James Brady was shot in the head, and when he died in 2014 a medical examiner ruled his death a homicide caused by that 1981 wound.

What was the job of the striking federal workers Reagan fired in August 1981 for defying his return-to-work order?

Air traffic controllers' union had backed Reagan in 1980, yet he fired the strikers and kept planes flying with supervisors, loyal controllers and new hires.

Whom did Reagan nominate in 1981 as the first woman on the US Supreme Court?

Sandra Day O'Connor could not land a law-firm job after Stanford because she was a woman, so she began her career as a government lawyer in San Mateo County.

Which was the only state Walter Mondale won against Reagan in the 1984 election?

Minnesota backed its native son, even though Mondale had openly promised in his acceptance speech to raise taxes to cut the federal deficit.

Which congresswoman did Walter Mondale choose as his running mate against Reagan in 1984?

Geraldine Ferraro's pick excited the campaign, but its momentum stalled once questions arose about her husband's business finances.

What two-word label did Reagan give the Soviet Union in a March 1983 speech to evangelicals?

'Evil empire' was a label Reagan later disowned: visiting Moscow in 1988, he told a reporter he had been talking about another time, another era.

Which senator's jibe about 'reckless Star Wars schemes' is credited with giving Reagan's SDI its nickname?

Ted Kennedy's jibe stuck to a plan Reagan hoped would make nuclear weapons 'impotent and obsolete', and Reagan even offered to share the shield with the Soviets.

In the Iran-Contra affair, arms-sale profits were diverted to rebels fighting which country's government?

Nicaragua's Contra rebels got the diverted money, and in March 1987 Reagan conceded that the facts and the evidence showed he had traded arms for hostages.

Which Marine lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council staff was accused of masterminding the Iran-Contra diversion?

Oliver North was convicted on three counts in 1989, but the case collapsed because his immunized testimony to Congress may have influenced the witnesses against him.

Which city hosted the October 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit that collapsed over SDI?

Reykjavík's summit ended with no agreement and was first seen as a failure, yet the progress made there led to the 1987 INF Treaty.

Which Russian proverb did Reagan quote at the 1987 INF Treaty signing?

Trust, but verify was a maxim Reagan used so often that at the signing Gorbachev cut in, 'You repeat that at every meeting,' and Reagan answered, 'I like it.'

Where was Reagan standing when he said 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' on 12 June 1987?

At the Brandenburg Gate Reagan delivered a line his own foreign-policy advisers had fought to cut, but he decided to leave it in.

Who wrote Reagan's address to the nation on the evening of the Challenger disaster in 1986?

Peggy Noonan wrote the address Reagan gave in place of his State of the Union that night, ending with the crew having 'slipped the surly bonds of earth'.

Which Caribbean island did Reagan send US forces into on 25 October 1983?

Grenada's prime minister had been murdered by a faction of his own party, and Reagan said he invaded above all to protect the Americans there, many of them medical students.

Nancy Reagan's signature First Lady campaign had which three-word slogan?

'Just Say No' was Nancy Reagan's reply when an Oakland schoolchild asked what to say if offered drugs, and Just Say No clubs later sprang up in schools across the country.

Which sweet did Reagan keep in a jar at meetings and hand out in presidential gift jars to visiting dignitaries?

Jelly beans were his substitute for smoking, and one candy maker kept his White House supplied throughout his presidency.

What was Reagan's mountaintop ranch near Santa Barbara, the 'Western White House', called?

Rancho del Cielo was sold by Nancy Reagan in 1998 to Young America's Foundation, a conservative group that uses it to pass on his ideas to future generations.

Reagan's presidential library, where he and Nancy are buried, sits in which Southern California city?

Simi Valley got the library after a plan to build it at Stanford University fell apart in 1987 under pressure from students and faculty.

Which former British prime minister's eulogy was played on video at Reagan's 2004 state funeral?

Margaret Thatcher had been advised by her doctors to give up formal public speaking, so her eulogy was recorded in advance and played at the service she attended.

In 1998, on Reagan's 87th birthday, Clinton signed a law renaming which facility in his honour?

Washington National Airport's Metro station kept its old name after the renaming, until a 2001 act of Congress ordered the transit authority to rename it and change its signs.

Reagan's mother Nelle, who raised him in her church, belonged to which denomination?

The Disciples of Christ became Ronald's church too, but his older brother Neil followed their Catholic father's faith instead.

What was the title of Reagan's 1937 Hollywood debut film?

Love Is on the Air cast him as a crusading radio announcer, soon after he had quit a real radio job to try Hollywood.

Which California gun-control law did Reagan sign in 1967 in response to Black Panther copwatching?

Armed Black Panthers entered the state Capitol to protest the Mulford Act, yet the bill still passed, and even the NRA backed it.

Which economist did Reagan pick in 1987 to chair the Federal Reserve?

Alan Greenspan had been in the job about two months when Black Monday struck, and the next day he announced the Fed stood ready to supply liquidity.

Which associate justice did Reagan promote to Chief Justice in 1986?

William Rehnquist had so often dissented alone as an associate justice that he was nicknamed the Lone Ranger.

In November 1994, how did Reagan tell Americans that he had Alzheimer's disease?

In a handwritten letter, Reagan made his diagnosis public in the hope that it would promote greater awareness of the disease.

After the 1981 shooting, Nancy Reagan quietly consulted what kind of adviser about the president's schedule?

An astrologer in San Francisco, Joan Quigley, advised on which days and times were safest for the president, a secret that came out in 1988 in a former chief of staff's memoir.

In 1984 Reagan signed a proclamation making July a national month in honour of which dessert?

Ice cream got its own month and its own day, 15 July, under a 1984 resolution; it named that year alone, but makers kept the custom going.

Which flower did Reagan make the national floral emblem of the United States by signing a law in 1986?

The rose became the country's national floral emblem only in 1986, 210 years after independence, when Reagan signed the legislation.

Reagan and Art Linkletter co-hosted the live 1955 telecast of which California attraction's opening day?

Disneyland opened with three of Walt Disney's Hollywood friends anchoring the nationwide broadcast: Reagan, Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings.

What kept Army officer Ronald Reagan from serving overseas in World War II, so he made training films instead?

Poor eyesight had him classified for limited service only, so the Army put him in a film unit at Culver City, where he was promoted to captain.

When Reagan took office in 1981, he became the first American president who had been through what?

A divorce in 1949 ended Reagan's first marriage, and no president before him had been through one, though he often stressed family values all the same.

A 1984 law signed by Reagan cut federal highway money for any state that refused to raise what to 21?

The drinking age reached 21 nationwide by a side door: states kept the power to set it lower, but doing so cost them 10 percent of their highway funds.

Reagan at first opposed, then signed in 1983, a federal holiday honouring which American?

Martin Luther King got a federal holiday because Congress passed the bill by veto-proof margins, 338–90 and 78–22; it was first observed in January 1986.

Why was Reagan's second inauguration in January 1985 moved inside the Capitol and its parade cancelled?

Extreme cold, about 7°F by day, drove the swearing-in into the Rotunda; twenty of the school bands that lost their parade marched at Epcot that May instead.

A hangar at the Reagan Presidential Library displays a retired Boeing 707 that flew under which call sign?

Air Force One here is tail number 27000, a jet that carried seven presidents over twenty-nine years before it was retired and given a pavilion of its own.

Reagan, once a radio announcer and film star, was given which admiring nickname during his presidency?

The Great Communicator earned the name by talking about substantive issues in terms ordinary voters understood and by keeping to mainstream concerns.

Pat Schroeder nicknamed Reagan the president made of what, because scandal never seemed to cling to him?

Teflon came to the Colorado congresswoman's mind while she was frying eggs in a non-stick pan, and the label stuck to a president who stayed popular amid scandal.

A 1983 truck bomb killed 241 American servicemen at a Marine barracks in which Middle Eastern city?

Beirut was where the Marines were serving as peacekeepers; the blast was the Corps' deadliest single day since Iwo Jima and led to the mission's withdrawal.

Reagan ordered air strikes on which country in April 1986 after blaming it for bombing a West Berlin disco?

Libya was hit ten days after the disco blast, which killed two American soldiers; the raid, code-named El Dorado Canyon, was aimed at the rule of Muammar Gaddafi.

USS Ronald Reagan, christened by Nancy Reagan in 2001, is what type of American warship?

An aircraft carrier, she was the first of her kind, and the first nuclear-powered warship of any type, to be named for a former president who was alive to see it.

In 1984 Reagan visited Ballyporeen, the village where his great-grandfather was baptised, in which country?

Ireland's County Tipperary is where Michael Regan was baptised in 1829 before emigrating; he changed the spelling of his surname later.

What verdict did a jury reach in June 1982 on John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot Reagan?

Not guilty by reason of insanity on all 13 charges, the verdict sent Hinckley into psychiatric care for over three decades and stirred an outcry that led Congress to narrow the defence.

Which secretary of state told reporters he was in control at the White House hours after Reagan was shot?

Alexander Haig said it although he was not next in the line of succession, and he resigned from the cabinet in July 1982.

In 1984 Reagan announced a NASA project to send a member of which profession into space as a civilian?

A teacher, Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire, was picked from more than 11,000 applicants; she died with six crewmates when Challenger broke apart in January 1986.

Reagan's 1988 Civil Liberties Act paid $20,000 each to surviving members of which group interned in World War II?

Japanese Americans also received a formal apology; the act blamed their internment on race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership, not on security needs.

Governor Reagan sent National Guard troops in 1969 to occupy which California city after clashes over People's Park?

Berkeley was occupied for two weeks; Reagan had campaigned for governor on a promise to clean up what he called the mess on its university campus.

Reagan played guard on the football team and graduated in 1932 with an economics degree from which small college?

Eureka College also gave Reagan his first taste of politics: he became student body president and joined a student strike that ended with the college president's resignation.

Which Hollywood star and his wife, Brenda Marshall, were the only guests when Reagan married Nancy in 1952?

William Holden was best man and Brenda Marshall matron of honour at the tiny ceremony; he and Reagan had both served in the Army Air Forces' film unit during the war.

Which 1957 submarine drama is the only feature film in which Ronald and Nancy Reagan acted together?

Hellcats of the Navy cast Nancy as a nurse opposite Reagan's submarine commander, five years after the two had married; it was her next-to-last film.

In which 1964 crime film, his last, did Reagan play the only villain of his Hollywood career?

The Killers cast him as a mob boss opposite Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson; Reagan reportedly regretted making it, and he never took another film role.

Which western anthology series did Reagan host from 1964 until he left to run for governor of California?

Death Valley Days, sponsored by a borax company, was his final acting work; when he left for the campaign the film star Robert Taylor took over as host.

What is the title of the autobiography Reagan published in 1990, the year after he left the White House?

An American Life was largely ghostwritten by the journalist Robert Lindsey; Reagan had told his earlier life story in a 1965 memoir, before he ever held office.

Ron Reagan, the president's younger son, left Yale after one semester in 1976 to pursue which career?

Ballet dancer was his lifelong dream, and he made the Joffrey's second company; a 1980 Time article noted that his parents had not managed to see a single performance.

Which Secret Service code name was assigned to Ronald Reagan, a keen horseman who had starred in westerns?

Rawhide set the pattern for the whole family, whose code names all began with R: Nancy was Rainbow and his daughter Maureen was Rosebud.

Which Reagan nominee to the Supreme Court did the Senate reject by 58 votes to 42 in October 1987?

Robert Bork lost after contentious, highly publicised confirmation hearings; Reagan had chosen him for the seat of the retiring justice Lewis Powell.

Which surgeon general under Reagan mailed an AIDS information leaflet to every American household in 1988?

C. Everett Koop, a paediatric surgeon picked for his conservative views, infuriated some former supporters by urging sex education and condom use to slow the epidemic.

Which Democratic Speaker of the House fought Reagan's policies by day but was, Reagan wrote, a friend after 6 p.m.?

Tip O'Neill called the Reagan presidency one big Christmas party for the rich, yet in private the two men were always on cordial terms.

Reagan told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 that some members of his union were linked to what?

The Communist Party was the committee's target, but Reagan was a careful witness: asked about its efforts among Hollywood's screenwriters, he called what he had heard hearsay.

In 1984 Reagan's administration opened full diplomatic relations with which state after a lapse dating from 1867?

The Holy See received its first American ambassador in William Wilson, who had been Reagan's personal envoy to the Pope since 1981; Congress had cut off money for a mission in 1867.

Which Canadian prime minister hosted Reagan at the 1985 'Shamrock Summit' in Quebec City, where the two sang on stage?

Brian Mulroney used the 24-hour meeting to sign a salmon treaty and a declaration on trade, the first major step toward the free trade agreement the two countries reached in 1988.

Governor Reagan finished third on the only ballot at the 1968 Republican convention, which nominated whom for president?

Richard Nixon won on the first ballot with 692 votes, ahead of Nelson Rockefeller on 277 and Reagan, then less than two years into his first elected office, on 182.

Reagan died at home in June 2004 of which illness, a decade after disclosing that he had Alzheimer's disease?

Pneumonia, complicated by Alzheimer's, took him at 93, which made him the longest-lived American president up to that time.

As governor, Reagan signed a 1967 California law that decriminalised which medical procedure in certain cases?

Abortion was decriminalised when done to protect the mother's health; Reagan came to believe that doctors were reading that provision too loosely.

In one of his last acts as president, Reagan pardoned which baseball team owner over illegal campaign donations?

George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, had admitted in court in 1974 to making illegal contributions to a presidential campaign and to obstruction of justice.

Reagan marked the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984 with a speech to veteran Army Rangers at which Normandy site?

Pointe du Hoc is the headland whose cliffs the Rangers climbed under fire with ropes and ladders; Reagan spoke at the memorial on top to men who had fought there.

In the 1940 film Santa Fe Trail, Reagan played which future Army general alongside Errol Flynn's Jeb Stuart?

George Custer and Jeb Stuart are shown, fictionally, as friends from the same West Point class who compete for the hand of Olivia de Havilland's character.

When Reagan was inaugurated at 69, he took the record for the oldest incoming president from which man?

William H. Harrison was 68 when he took the oath in 1841 and kept the record for 140 years, even though he died only 31 days into his term.

Which liberal Pennsylvania senator did Reagan name as his running mate before the 1976 Republican convention?

Richard Schweiker was meant to pry loose delegates from his home state, but the gamble alienated conservatives; Reagan later made him secretary of health and human services.

Reagan pardoned which former FBI official, who revealed in 2005 that he was the Watergate source 'Deep Throat'?

Mark Felt had been convicted in 1980 of ordering agents to break into the homes of people linked to the Weather Underground; he was fined, then pardoned during his appeal.

Which Secret Service agent shoved Reagan into the limousine in 1981, then diverted it to the hospital?

Jerry Parr changed course when the president coughed up bright, frothy blood; as a boy he had been drawn to the job by a 1939 film in which Reagan played an agent.

Reagan's 1985 visit to a military cemetery in which West German town caused outrage because SS men were buried there?

Bitburg held 49 members of the Waffen-SS among some 2,000 German soldiers; Reagan added a stop at the Bergen-Belsen camp and spent only eight minutes at the graves.

On a 1961 LP record, Reagan warned listeners against plans that led to which federal programme?

Medicare, created in 1965, is often traced to the bill Reagan attacked on the record, which a later writer called part of a stealth campaign by the doctors' lobby, Operation Coffee Cup.

In June 1989 Britain made Reagan an honorary Knight Grand Cross of which order of chivalry?

The Bath honour, an honorary knighthood, came five months after he left office; three years later Berlin, the divided city he had visited as president, made him an honorary citizen.

Which sporting event did Reagan officially open in Los Angeles in July 1984, in his home state of California?

The Summer Olympics of 1984 went ahead without 14 Eastern Bloc countries, which stayed away in reply to the American-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier.

What did Reagan's 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act offer most migrants who had entered illegally before 1982?

Legal status was sought by nearly three million people under the act, which in the same stroke made it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers.