News : Happy Presidents' Day!

It's Presidents' Day, so there will not be a regular email. Only time sensative information is going out today. In honor of the holiday, I put information together, about our Presidents. If you're like me, it's been a while since I've looked at the lives of all the presidents.

Did you know that the story we've all heard about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree after receiving an axe as a gift and the supposed confession, "I cannot tell a lie ... I did cut it with my hatchet." Well, we don't know if that's really true...but the story stuck.

Here are some fun facts about our 47 presidents (I know, I know there are technically only 45 because two have served twice, so 45/47 47/45 whatever).

Something that wasn't in our history books...The first woman to run for president was Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull was nominated by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City.

Eight presidents have died in office:

Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in the Ford Theater

John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas, TX

William Henry Harrison it was originally thought that it was from pneumonia, but recent theories suggest he may have suffered from enteric fever related to contaminated water in Washington, D.C.

Zachary Taylor, cholera morbus, which is believed to have been caused by gastrointestinal distress after consuming contaminated food and drink...but there are some theories that he could've been poisoned over his fight against slavery.

James A. Garfield, infection and sepsis from a gunshot wound

William McKinley, gangrene due to gunshot wounds from an assassination attempt

Warren G. Harding, heart attack

Franklin D. Roosevelt, collapsed while posing for a portrait and died due to a cerebral hemorrhage

Seven presidents weren't at their successor's inauguration:John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Donald Trump and Woodrow Wilson

The 4th of July is not only our nation's birthday, but it marked the deaths of three presidents: Thomas Jefferson (1826), John Adams (1826), and James Monroe (1831).

Calvin Coolidge is the only president to have been born on the July 4th in 1872.

Six Presidents named James: Madison, Monroe, Polk, Buchanan, Garfield, and Carter.

Children: Five of our U.S. presidents didn't have biological children: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, James Madison and James K. Polk and one had a lot of them, but you'll have to do some reading to find him! Zero presidents have been an only child.

The Nobel Peace Prize: Four U.S. presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize (But Trump wasn't one of them): Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama

15 were Masons: George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford.

Did you know that the White House was named that by Theodore Roosevelt and the building is made up of 132 rooms.

Here are just a few things about our Presidents that you may not have known.

1. George Washington (1789-1797): The very first U.S. president and the only Independent candidate. He didn't have enough money to get to his own inauguration so he had to borrow $600 from his neighbor where he made the shortest inauguration speech at 133 words and less than two minutes long. He was a Revolutionary War hero. Washington was unanimously elected, but was the first president to refuse to accept his presidential salary, which was $25,000 a year. He never lived in the White House. At the time, the capital was in Philadelphia. He was the only president who didn't represent a political party.

Washington's original ancestral name was de Wessyngton, from William de Hertburn, a twelfth-century noble knight of the manor and village of Wessyngton who later changed his name to de Wessyngton (which is the Norman spelling of Washington)

He was also a dog breeder, particularly of hunting hounds. Some of the dogs names included "Sweet Lips" and "Drunkard." 

2. John Adams (1797-1801): Adams and his wife, Abigail, exchanged more than 1,100 letters over the course of their lengthy relationship. They were the first residents of the White House. John Adam's dying words were "Thomas Jefferson still survives," unaware that Jefferson had passed away a few hours earlier.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were vandals together. They traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare's birthplace, where they took a knife to one of Shakespeare's chairs so they could take home some wood chips as souvenirs. 

3. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809): Jefferson, wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. He was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. His last words were "This is the Fourth?" (of July). On his epitaph, which he composed, Jefferson mentioned that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the Statuette of Virginia for Religious Freedom and that he was the father of the University of Virginia. He neglected to mention that he had been a president.

He has a family of plants named after him, Jeffersonia diphylla, which is also known as twin root or rheumatism root.

4. James Madison (1809-1817): Madison was the shortest president at 5'4" and weighed barely over 100 pounds. He was known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." During Madison’s presidency, the British army infamously burned down the White House and other government buildings in Washington, D.C. in 1814. 

Madison and Jefferson were once arrested for taking a carriage ride together in the countryside of Vermont on a Sunday, which violated the laws of that state.

5. James Monroe (1817-1825): Other than Washington, Monroe was the only president to ever run essentially unopposed, coasting to re-election in the 1820 race. He is known for the Monroe Doctrine, which was his foreign policy implemented to establish dominance in the Western Hemisphere. He was the first to be inaugurated on the Capital Steps. He was the last president to wear a powdered wig. It's been told that he chased his Secretary of State from the White House with a pair of fire tongs.

6. John Quincy Adams (1825-1829): Years after leaving the White House, Quincy Adams argued a famous Supreme Court case that freed the captive Africans who had rebelled aboard the Amistad slave ship. He was the first to wear full length pants to his inauguration.

If you lived during this time, you might find Adams skinny dipping in the Potomac River, or run into the alligator that he kept at the White House. 

7. Andrew Jackson (1829-1837): Jackson was the first president to have and assassination attempt made on him. It didn't go well, for the would be assassin. Richard Lawrence, a house painter had two guns, to carry out the attempt, but both of them misfired. Statisticians say this could occur only once in 125,000 times. Andrew Jackson then chased Lawrence with his walking stick.

Jackson, himself was involved in over 100 duels, most to defend the honor of his wife, Rachel. (She died of a heart attack, after the election and before the inauguration, so never saw the White House.) He had a bullet in his chest from an 1806 duel and another bullet in his arm from a barroom fight in 1813 with Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. In all of the duels, he only killed one man. 

8. Martin Van Buren (1837-1841): Van Buren was the first American born citizen. All previous presidents were originally British subjects, born prior to 1776. English was his second language, with Dutch being his first. He was known as  "O.K." which was derived from his childhood, known as "Old Kinderhook" raised in Kinderhook, New York. "O.K." clubs were created to support Van Buren's campaigns.

Name calling was a thing back then. He was known as "Martin Van Ruin" after the economic downturn during his presidency.

9. William Henry Harrison (1841): Harrison was the first president to die in office, lasting only 32 days, the shortest stint of any president. He holds the record for the longest inauguration speech in history at 8,578 words and one hour and 40 minutes. He gave the speech during bad weather and when he died a month later, his death was blamed on pneumonia, making his the shortest presidency on record. Before his presidency, he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

10. John Tyler (1841-1845): the first to assume office upon the death of a President, giving him the nickname, "His Accidency." Tyler fathered 15 children, 8 by his first wife, 7 by his second and his last when he was 70 years old. He was the first to get married in office, and the first set of children did not approve. His second wife Julia started the tradition of playing, "Hail to the Chief" when a president arrived.

11. James K. Polk (1845-1849): He was the first president to be photographed, the first to serve as a governor and Speaker of the House, the first to have his inaugural speech printed in a newspaper, and the first to veto a bill saying it was unconstitutional. He created the Smithsonian. He worked 12 hour days when elected saying, "No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.” His administration extended the United States to the Pacific Ocean. 

12. Zachary Taylor (1849-1850): "Old Rough and Ready" never voted in an election prior to being on the ballot himself. As a matter of fact, in 1848, the Whig Party nominated Taylor to be president without his knowledge.  They sent him notification of the nomination without postage paid, but he refused to pay the postage and did not find out about the nomination for weeks. During the Battle of Buena Vista, the Mexican general Santa Ana demanded that Zachary Taylor should surrender. Taylor said, "Tell him to go to hell."

13. Millard Fillmore (1850-1853): Fillmore was the last Whig president; the party imploded soon after he left office. He and his wife founded the first White House Library and during his term, in December 1851 he raced to help put out the blaze at the Library of Congress

14. Franklin Pierce (1853-1857): The only president from New Hampshire also attended college in New England-Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He did not have a Vice-President. He was known as "Handsome Frank." He had three sons, but all died before the age of 12. He was known to have issues with alcohol use and it worsened following the deaths of his sons and his wife.

15. James Buchanan (1857-1861): In 1853, while serving as minister to Great Britain, Buchanan helped draft the 1854 Ostend Manifesto, which advocated for an American invasion of Cuba. He was the only president that was a bachelor. He was known for his wit and humor, and as a skilled storyteller.

16. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865): "Honest Abe," the tallest president at 6'4", may have had Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes people to be very tall, thin and long limbed. Before becoming president, Lincoln was a licensed bartender and co-owned a bar/liquor store called Berry and Lincoln, a saloon in Springfield, Illinois. He had two cats in the White House named Tabby and Dixie. He was the first president to ever be photographed at his inauguration. In the photo, he is standing near John Wilkes Booth, his future assassin. He is the only president to hold a patent...# 6469. He was the first presidnt to have a beartd and the first to lose a child while in the White House.

Robert Todd Lincoln, his son, is the only man in U.S. history known to have witnessed the assassinations of three different presidents: his father, James Garfield, and William McKinley. After he saw anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoot McKinley, he vowed he would never again appear in public with an incumbent president.

17. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869):  Johnson apparently cared for a family of White House mice, which he called "the little fellows." Johnson is the only tailor ever to be president. By trade, he was a tailor and while president, he would stop at tailor shops just to say hello. He wore only suits that he made himself. He was the first president to be impeached. He was acquitted by one vote in the Senate.

18. Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877): Born Hiram Ulysses Grant he changed his name to Ulysses S. Grant due to a clerical error on his application to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was mistakenly listed as "Ulysses S. Grant." Civil War General Grant was invited to join Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the fateful evening of April 14, 1865, but was forced to decline after he and his wife made plans to visit their children in New Jersey. After his win, well-wishers sent him 10,000 cigars. He smoked 20 cigars a day and died of throat cancer.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881): Hayes was the first president to have a telephone in the White House. He fought lyssophobia, the fear of going insane.He banished alcohol from the White House and held gospel sing-alongs every night in the White House.

20. James A. Garfield (1881): Garfield was the first known left-handed president. He could also write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other hand...at the same time. He was elected to the U.S. Senate, but he never served as Ohio senator because he then won the Republican nomination for president. He was the first president to talk on the phone...to Alexander Graham Bell who was 13 miles away. He asked Bell to "Please speak a little more slowly." He didn't die from an assassins bullet, but from the blood poisoning after doctors and experts (including Alexander Graham Bell) tried to remove the bullet from his back with their dirty fingers and instruments, causing him to linger in pain for 80 days before dying.

21. Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885): Arthur was named in honor of Chester Abell, the doctor who delivered him. When elected, he made no inaugural address. Then he insisted that the White House be redecorated. 24 wagonloads of furniture were hauled off and sold at public auction. The pieces included some dating back to John Adams’ term and would be considered priceless today. He was rarely asleep before 2:00 a.m, and could often be found strolling through Washington D.C. at 3 or 4:00 a.m.

22. Grover Cleveland (1885-1889): Cleveland was the first U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was single when elected and the first to be married during his term in office. He dedicated the Statue of Liberty during this term. Known as the "Veto President" he was nicknamed, "Big Steve" because of his weight.

23. Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893): Harrison was the first president to hire a female White House staffer. He is remembered for delivering "front porch" campaign speeches. After being widowed, he married his first wife's niece. In weird family news, the body of his father John Scott Harrison, was stolen by grave robbers and sold to Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati for use as a training cadaver. The body was eventually recovered and reburied.

24. Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) See #22: He was the only president in history to hold the job of a hangman. Once the sheriff of Erie County, New York, twice he had to spring the trap at a hanging. Cleveland defeated James G. Blaine in 1884,then lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 (despite winning the popular vote). He came back to defeat Harrison in 1892.

25. William McKinley (1897-1901): McKinley's likeness appears on the $500 bill, which was discontinued in 1969.McKinley was the first to ride in a self-propelled vehicle-the electric ambulance that took him to the hospital after he had been shot.

26. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909): Roosevelt's favorite phrase was,"Speak softly and carry a big stick." Maybe that's why every member of his house owned a pair of stilts...even the first lady! He was the first president to travel outside of the U.S. He was the youngest at age 42, to become president...upon the death of McKinley. The teddy bear was named after him because he refused to shoot a small bear cub one day. The incident was reported in the news, which inspired a toy manufacturer to come out with the cute stuffed animals. During his second run for president, Roosevelt was shot by a would-be assassin while giving a speech in Milwaukee. He continued to deliver his speech with the bullet in his chest. Teddy Roosevelt's last request before dying was "Please put out the light."

27. William Howard Taft (1909-1913): Famous for his weight, Taft was the first president to hurl the ceremonial first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.He is the only President to serve also as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

28. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921): In a 1914 proclamation, Wilson officially established the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. An avid golfer, he painted his golf balls black during the winter so he could continue playing in the snow. He was the first to show a motion picture in the White House: The Birth of Nation.

29. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923): Prior to taking office, Harding wrote a series of lurid love letters to his mistress, the wife of one of his best friends. He reportedly had an affair during his presidency with Nan Britton, fathering his daughter, which was finally proven through the DNA of a grandchild in 2015. The "Teapot Dome" was the name for the scandal involving a bribery scandal under this administration. Obsessed with poker, he once bet an entire set of priceless White House China and lost it. He was the first president to own a radio, the first to make speech over the radio, and the first to ride to his inauguration in a car.

30. Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929): A quiet man, Coolidge purportedly replied, "You lose," to a visitor who bet she could get at least three words out of him. Coolidge liked to have his head rubbed with petroleum jelly while eating his breakfast in bed. He had a pet raccoon at the White House named Rebecca. Every so often, Coolidge would press all the buttons on the President's desk, then hide and watch his staff run in. He would then pop out from behind the door and say that he was just seeing if everyone was working.

31. Herbert Hoover (1929-1933): Hoover was an orphan whose first job was picking bugs off potato plants, for which he was paid a dollar per hundred bugs. He was also a a mine worker. Hoover was president during "Black Thursday" of 1929, the stock market crash/ Iowa native who spent part of his boyhood in Oregon, Hoover was the first president to hail from west of the Mississippi River.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945): The longest-serving commander-in-chief claimed to be distantly related to 11 other presidents, including his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt. In 1945, Congress voted to commemorate the work FDR did for the March of Dimes by putting his profile on the coin now dubbed the "Roosevelt Dime."

33. Harry S. Truman (1945-1953): The "S" in Harry S. Truman was just an initial; it didn't stand for anything. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan briefly in the early 1920s but he later rejected their anti-Catholic stance.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961): He was the only President who served in World War I and World War II. A World War II hero, "Ike" was the first president to ride in a helicopter. He is featured on the silver dollar.

35. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963): After being injured and honorably discharged in World War II, Kennedy was briefly employed as a journalist during the waning weeks of the war. He was the youngest ELECTED president at 43. He was the first Catholic and first Boy Scout. The most popular phrase of his, "Ask not what you your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" is another version of words spoken by many others, including Cicero, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and President Warren G. Harding, who told the 1916 Republican convention: "We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it, and more anxious about what it can do for the nation."

36. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969): Johnson's first career was as a teacher. He worked at a school near the U.S.-Mexico border for four years before launching a career in politics.

37. Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974): Nixon became such a skillful poker player while stationed in the Solomon Islands during World War II that his winnings helped launch his political career upon his return to the United States. A fan of bowling he added one lane to the White House. He was the first president to visit all 50 states and the first to visit China. He was the only president to resign.

38: Gerald Ford (1974-1977): Born Leslie Lunch King Jr., his biological father left his mother when he was only 16 days old. His mother remarried when he was four and they started calling him Gerald Rudoph Ford after his stepfather. Ford was a star football player at the University of Michigan, Ford turned down offers from both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. He worked as a model during college. He also worked as a forest ranger at Yellowstone National Park directing traffic and feeding the bears. He was the first to be both vice president and president without being elected by the people. He was appointed vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned and he succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned.

39. Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): He was the first to be born in a hospital. He was the first president to claim that he saw a UFO. When his father died in 1953, Carter gave up his successful military career to move back to Georgia and work on their family's peanut farm. A farming accident left one of his fingers permanently bent.

40. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989): Known as "Dutch," Reagan worked as a lifeguard and sportscaster before becoming an actor and, later, a politician. He also won the Most Nearly Perfect Male Figure Award from the University of California in 1940.

41. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993): He's the only president with four names. While a student at Yale University, Bush was captain of the baseball team and a member of Skull and Bones, an elite secret student society. He is responsible for a new Japanese word, "Bushusuru" after vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister. The word means"to do the Bush thing," or to publicly vomit.

42. Bill Clinton (1993-2001): Taught law at the University of Arkansas School of Law following his graduation in 1973. Clinton played the saxophone and famously performed on the Arsenio Hall Show when he was a candidate for president.

43. George W. Bush (2001-2009): Post-presidency, Bush took up oil painting, exhibiting his work at the Museum of the Southwest in Texas.

44. Barack Obama (2009-2017): Prior to becoming the first African American president, Obama won two Grammy Awards for "Best Spoken Word Album." His wife, Michelle, has likewise won a Grammy.

45. Donald J. Trump (2017-2021): Before becoming president, Trump was a real estate developer, entrepreneur and host of the NBC reality show, "The Apprentice." Trump was the first billionaire to become president. Trump doesn't smoke or drink after he watched his older brother, Freddy, struggle with addiction. The Trump name came about in the 17th century, originally it was Drumpf. Trump was the first U.S. president to be impeached twice.

46. Joe Biden (2021-2025): Biden overcame a debilitating childhood stutter after enduring bullying over the condition in grade school. He was the first person to hold office at 78 years old and then turn 80 while in office. He is also the first president to become a great-grandfather during his presidency.

47. Donald J. Trump (2025-present) see #45: The first president-elect to invite foreign heads of state to his inauguration including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Argentina President Javier Milei, and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. He was the second U.S. president to be elected to a second, non-consecutive term (Grover Cleveland was the first). He reportedly sleeps just 4 hours a night, usually from about 1 AM to 5 AM.