91 Fun Facts About Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was the first US president to be born in what kind of place?

A hospital: Carter was delivered at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, yet the farmhouse where he grew up went without electricity for most of his boyhood.

What was Jimmy Carter's mother's profession?

A registered nurse, Lillian Carter crossed Georgia's segregation lines to counsel poor Black women on health care, and at 68 she joined the Peace Corps.

Which college did Jimmy Carter attend immediately before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1943?

Georgia Institute of Technology was his second college: he threw himself into coursework there to improve his chances at Annapolis, where competition for places was stiff.

As a qualified undersea officer, Carter earned which Navy badge?

The dolphin badge marks an officer qualified in submarines; Carter chose the submarine service, then the Navy's most hazardous duty, and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.

Which officer, then a captain, led the fledgling nuclear submarine program Carter joined in 1952?

Hyman G. Rickover, later called the father of the nuclear Navy, pushed his young officers mercilessly; Carter named him among the greatest influences on his life.

What event prompted Jimmy Carter to resign from the Navy and return to Georgia?

His father's death in July 1953 put the family farm at risk, so Carter gave up a flourishing naval career to run it, a move Rosalynn deeply opposed.

For a year after Carter left the Navy, where did he, Rosalynn and their three sons live in Plains?

Public housing was their first home back in Plains because Carter's share of the family estate proved comparatively small, and the farm barely broke even at first.

As governor in 1974, Carter dedicated a portrait of which civil rights leader in the Georgia State Capitol?

Martin Luther King Jr.'s portrait went up while Ku Klux Klan members chanted their opposition outside; it was one of three portraits of Black Georgians that Carter added to the Capitol.

After the Brown school ruling, Carter came under heavy pressure in Plains to join which new segregationist group?

The White Citizens' Council spread across the South to fight the Supreme Court's school desegregation rulings and won a following in Plains, but Carter refused to join.

Announcing his run in the wake of Watergate, candidate Carter made voters which simple promise?

Never to lie to them: after Watergate and Vietnam had shattered trust in government, the pledge let a little-known former governor run as an honest outsider.

Because of Carter's low name recognition early in the 1976 race, opponents derisively asked what?

'Jimmy Who?' was the jibe at his obscurity; he leaned into it, opening speeches with 'My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president.'

Who was Jimmy Carter's running mate when he defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election?

Walter Mondale, a Minnesota senator, gave the ticket a Northern presence and reassured labor unions wary of a president from the South.

Carter became the 1976 front-runner by winning New Hampshire and which other early contest?

The Iowa caucuses gave Carter a surprise victory over the other candidates, though more caucus-goers stayed uncommitted; his early campaigning there helped put Iowa on the national electoral map.

At his 1977 inauguration, Carter left his limousine and walked with Rosalynn down which Washington avenue?

Pennsylvania Avenue had never seen a president walk the parade route from the Capitol to the White House; the surprise delighted the crowd.

The 1978 Camp David Accords, brokered by Jimmy Carter, led to a 1979 peace treaty between which two countries?

Egypt and Israel signed the treaty in Washington in March 1979, six months after Carter spent 13 days shuttling between the two delegations at Camp David.

Carter signed the 1977 Panama Canal treaties with which Panamanian leader?

Omar Torrijos signed for Panama; the treaties then cleared the Senate in 1978 with 68 votes, just one more than needed, after Carter worked tirelessly on senators of both parties.

On 1 January 1979, Carter opened full US diplomatic relations with which Communist-ruled country?

China won formal recognition at the price of US ties with Taiwan: Carter withdrew recognition from Taipei and ended the mutual defense treaty, a step Republicans challenged in court.

The Soviet invasion of which country ended détente and prompted the US boycott of the 1980 Olympics?

Afghanistan was invaded in December 1979; Carter also cut off grain sales to the Soviet Union and withdrew the SALT II arms treaty from the Senate.

Who served as Jimmy Carter's national security adviser for all four years of his presidency?

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-born Columbia professor, pressed a tough line on Moscow and clashed with the State Department's more cautious diplomats throughout the term.

The Carter Center, founded in 1982, has sent observers to monitor more than 100 of what around the world?

Elections it watched include Nicaragua's in 1990, where Carter himself was among the observers as the ruling Sandinistas lost and handed power to their rival.

Which prize did Jimmy Carter win in 2002?

The Nobel Peace Prize honored his decades of work for peaceful solutions to conflicts; the committee said his Camp David mediation alone had been a great enough achievement to qualify.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were famous for decades of hands-on volunteer work with which charity?

Habitat for Humanity says Carter put it on the map: in 1984 he and Rosalynn led a busload of Georgia volunteers to New York City to renovate a Lower East Side tenement.

While living in the White House, the Carters' young daughter attended what kind of school in Washington?

A public school: she went first to Stevens Elementary and then to Hardy Middle School, in keeping with parents who frowned on presidential pomp.

Which damaged nuclear plant did Carter tour on 1 April 1979, days after its accident?

Three Mile Island had begun its partial meltdown four days earlier; Carter, a former nuclear submarine officer, said he came to learn all he could and to assure the people of the region.

To set a cost-cutting example, Carter ordered the sale of which White House perk in 1977?

The presidential yacht Sequoia, long known as the floating White House, was sold on Carter's orders; he also retired Nixon's huge limousine in favor of a smaller one.

When Jimmy left the Navy for the family business, what job did Rosalynn Carter take on?

Bookkeeper: Rosalynn taught herself accounting to manage the farm and warehouse books, and the family business grew into a real success under the couple's joint management.

In what small community near Plains, Georgia, did Jimmy Carter primarily grow up?

Archery was home from the age of four until he left for college; on the farm there, young Jimmy stacked produce on a wagon, hauled it into Plains and sold it.

Which Georgia congressman and civil rights veteran did Carter name US ambassador to the United Nations in 1977?

Andrew Young helped make human rights a central focus of Carter's foreign policy, but was forced to resign in 1979 after meeting a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Governor Carter's 1971 inaugural address left which group feeling betrayed?

Segregationists who backed him heard him declare that 'the time for racial discrimination is over'; the speech surprised Georgians and won Carter national attention.

After seven years as a naval officer, what rank did Jimmy Carter hold when he left active duty in 1953?

Lieutenant Carter walked away from a flourishing career in the new nuclear submarine program, where he had been teaching nuclear engineering to a handpicked crew.

The 1980 Carter Doctrine committed the United States to the defense of which region?

The Persian Gulf and its oil supplies looked exposed to Soviet power in early 1980, so Carter pledged that the United States would protect the region against outside control.

Before his 1962 state Senate run, Carter chaired which Sumter County body?

The school board came first: Carter then made schools his cause in the state Senate, where he went on to chair the committee that handled them.

In 1979 Carter had what installed on the White House roof?

Solar panels heated White House water until they were taken down during roof work in 1986; Carter had warned they might end up 'a museum piece', and one now sits in the Smithsonian.

One of Carter's first acts as president, Proclamation 4483, granted unconditional amnesty to whom?

On 21 January 1977, the day after his inauguration, Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders, fulfilling a campaign promise; military deserters were not covered.

Which industry did Carter deregulate with a landmark act he signed in October 1978?

Airlines came first: the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was followed by trucking and railroads, moves that eventually lowered transport costs for industry and consumers.

The Carter Center works with the WHO to eradicate dracunculiasis, better known as what?

Dracunculiasis is Guinea worm disease, caught by drinking water containing infected water fleas; the Carter Center-led campaign cut cases from about 3.5 million in 1986 to 14 reported in 2023.

What was the name of Jimmy Carter's daughter, his youngest child?

Amy Lynn Carter's nanny for most of the years from 1971 to 1981 was Mary Prince, a woman wrongly convicted of murder and later pardoned.

With The Hornet's Nest in 2003, Jimmy Carter became the first US president to publish what?

A novel: Carter wrote it after finding how little had been written on the Revolutionary War in the South, a story usually told from the northern colonies' side.

Carter won his first state Senate seat in 1962 only after proving what about his apparent primary defeat?

Voter fraud in Quitman County had padded his opponent's total; a judge threw out the fraudulent ballots, and Carter later told the story in his book Turning Point.

Which cabinet department did Carter create in 1977, with James Schlesinger as its first secretary?

The Department of Energy pulled scattered federal energy programs into one agency, alongside the nuclear weapons work that dated back to the Manhattan Project.

Where was Jimmy Carter buried in January 2025, next to Rosalynn?

On the grounds of his home in Plains: Carter said he could have chosen Arlington, but he and Rosalynn were both born in the town, and they picked the lawn by their pond themselves.

A 1977 message from President Carter was launched into deep space aboard which pair of spacecraft?

Voyager's golden records carry Carter's words, written for whoever might find the craft, that the message is 'likely to survive a billion years into our future'.

Who chaired the President's Commission on the Holocaust that Carter established in November 1978?

Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor and author of 'Night', chaired the commission; its 1979 report led to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, dedicated in 1993.

Which entertainment award did Jimmy Carter first win in 2007, long after leaving the White House?

A Grammy went to the audio version of his book Our Endangered Values in the spoken word category, a win he shared in a tie with the actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.

Why did Carter's schooling at Plains High end after the 11th grade in 1941?

It offered no twelfth year: Plains High taught every grade in a single building and stopped at the eleventh, so Carter finished there in 1941 and went straight on to college.

Which product did the president's brother Billy Carter lend his name to in 1977?

A beer: Billy Beer traded on his image as a beer-drinking Southern good ol' boy and helped make him nightly fodder for talk-show comedians.

What wiped out Carter's first peanut harvest after he left the Navy?

Drought wiped out his first peanut crop; he opened several lines of credit to keep the farm afloat, studied agriculture, and barely broke even in year one.

Carter finished third in the 1966 Democratic primary for governor, a race ultimately won by which segregationist?

Lester Maddox, an Atlanta restaurant owner famous for refusing to serve Black customers, won the runoff, and the legislature made him governor when no one took a majority in November.

Under the Camp David Accords, Israel agreed to withdraw completely from which territory?

The Sinai Peninsula: Begin accepted withdrawal from every base and settlement there, and in return Carter agreed to fund the rebuilding of Israeli military bases in the Negev Desert.

Which memoir did Carter publish in 1975 to introduce himself to voters?

'Why Not the Best?' takes its title from a question a demanding Navy superior once put to the young Carter; the book introduced a little-known former governor to voters.

In a 1976 debate with Carter, President Ford insisted there was 'no Soviet domination' of which region?

Eastern Europe's governments answered to Moscow at the time, yet Ford stood by the claim for days while the press hounded him and the jokes about him intensified.

Which magazine's November 1976 issue had Carter admitting 'adultery in my heart'?

Playboy's interview had Carter confess he had 'committed adultery in my heart many times'; he had led Ford by double digits going into the fall, and the lead slipped.

Who was Gerald Ford's running mate in the 1976 election Carter won?

Bob Dole joined the ticket after Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, facing resistance from the party's conservatives, offered to withdraw; twenty years later Dole was the Republican nominee himself.

In 1978 Carter declared an emergency in which toxic-waste area of Niagara Falls?

Love Canal, a neighborhood built over a chemical dump, received the first federal emergency funds ever approved for something other than a natural disaster; the Superfund law followed.

In 1978 Carter used the Antiquities Act to protect 56 million acres in which state?

Alaska's new national monuments held the land until Congress passed its 1980 Alaska lands act, which protected more than 100 million acres and more than doubled the national park system.

What did Carter famously wear to address the nation on energy in 1977 after turning down the White House heat?

A cardigan sweater matched the message: Carter had the White House thermostats set to 65 degrees by day and 55 at night, a chill that irritated Rosalynn.

A 1978 bill Carter signed legalized which hobby for the first time since Prohibition?

Homebrewing beer had stayed illegal long after Prohibition ended in 1933; within months of the change, Charlie Papazian founded the American Homebrewers Association.

Which automaker's federal loan guarantee did Carter sign into law in January 1980?

Chrysler, one of Detroit's Big Three, stood on the verge of bankruptcy; the act Carter signed on 7 January 1980 authorized up to $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees to keep it alive.

Carter signed the act creating which new cabinet department in October 1979?

Education got a department of its own when Health, Education and Welfare was split in two; what remained became Health and Human Services.

Carter's 1978 trip to which country was the first US presidential state visit to sub-Saharan Africa?

Nigeria hosted Carter from 31 March to 3 April 1978; he came to improve relations and to press for a peace conference on Rhodesia.

On New Year's Eve 1977 Carter toasted which country as an 'island of stability'?

Toasting the Shah in Tehran on 31 December 1977, Carter called Iran an 'island of stability'; little more than a year later the Shah had been forced to flee the country.

How many days were the 52 Americans seized at the Tehran embassy held hostage?

The hostages were held 444 days, from 4 November 1979 to 20 January 1981, and released minutes after Reagan was sworn in; Carter's 'Rose Garden strategy' kept him in the White House for much of the crisis.

What was the code name of the staging area for the failed April 1980 hostage rescue?

Desert One, a remote site in Iran's Dasht-e Kavir, was the refuelling point; only five of eight helicopters arrived fit to fly, short of the six required, and a collision during withdrawal killed eight servicemen.

Which secretary of state resigned after opposing the 1980 hostage rescue mission?

Cyrus Vance believed the raid could not work and that negotiation was still the way to bring the hostages home; Senator Edmund Muskie took his place.

In which city did Carter and Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty on June 18, 1979?

Vienna hosted the signing, but the Senate never acted on the treaty and Carter withdrew it; both superpowers nevertheless agreed to abide by its terms.

At the 1980 convention Carter mangled the late Vice President Humphrey's name into what?

Carter called him 'Hubert Horatio Hornblower' in his acceptance speech at the August 1980 convention in New York before correcting himself; Humphrey had died in January 1978.

Which centrist ran as an independent in 1980 after losing the GOP primaries to Reagan?

Illinois congressman John B. Anderson took about 7 percent as an independent; Carter refused to share a stage with him, so the only Carter-Reagan debate came on 28 October, a week before the vote.

After losing in 1980, Carter said he would model his retirement on which former president?

Harry S. Truman was his model for not using public life to enrich himself; Carter came home to find his peanut business, held in trust while he served, more than a million dollars in debt.

In 1994 Carter negotiated a nuclear understanding with which North Korean leader?

Carter met Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang in June 1994, weeks before Kim's death, and announced the outline on CNN without White House consent; the Agreed Framework was signed that October.

Who founded The Elders, the group Carter joined at its 2007 Johannesburg launch?

Nelson Mandela announced The Elders on his 89th birthday; the idea of a council of independent global leaders had come from entrepreneur Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel.

Which 2006 Carter bestseller drew fire for its take on Israeli policy in the West Bank?

'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid' sold strongly while its criticisms of Israel stirred controversy; director Jonathan Demme followed Carter's publicity tour for the documentary Man from Plains.

In 2000 Carter quit which denomination after it barred women from becoming pastors?

The Southern Baptist Convention lost Carter in 2000, when he said women should play an absolutely equal role in the church; he went on teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist in Plains.

Which singer, a friend since 1973, phoned the White House months before dying in 1977?

Elvis Presley first met the Carters in June 1973; on their last call, two months before his death, Carter found him almost incoherent, and later said he had 'changed the face of American popular culture'.

In August 2015 Carter revealed which cancer had spread to his brain and liver?

Melanoma had been found in his brain and liver, Carter said that August; by December he announced that his scans showed no cancer, and he lived another nine years.

All three of Carter's younger siblings died of which disease?

Pancreatic cancer killed Ruth in 1983, Billy in 1988 and Gloria in 1990, as it had their father; Jimmy, the eldest of the four, lived to 100.

In 2019 the Carters became the longest-wed presidential couple, overtaking which pair?

George and Barbara Bush had been married 73 years when she died in 2018; the Carters passed them in October 2019, though Rosalynn had turned down Jimmy's first proposal.

Which president did Carter personally ask to deliver his eulogy?

Carter asked Joe Biden, the first senator to endorse him in 1976, to deliver the eulogy; all five living presidents attended the 9 January 2025 state funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

The USS Jimmy Carter, commissioned in 2005, is the final boat of which submarine class?

USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) is the third and last Seawolf-class attack submarine; Carter is the only president to have qualified in submarines, and Rosalynn sponsored the boat at its 2004 christening.

Misty Malarky Ying Yang, the White House pet of the Carters' young daughter, was what kind of animal?

A Siamese cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang had a name so unusual that jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo put a tune with that title on his 1977 album Faces.

Carter's mother Lillian joined the Peace Corps at 68 and served in which country?

India was where Lillian Carter served, but only after the Peace Corps had her undergo a psychiatric evaluation before it would accept a volunteer of her age.

Billy Carter's ties to which country's regime embarrassed his brother's 1980 campaign?

Libya's payments to Billy Carter, never fully explained, led to a Senate investigation and to his registering as a foreign agent, an embarrassment that dragged on for the president.

What made for Carter's fishing boat 'hissing menacingly' on a Plains pond in April 1979?

A swamp rabbit: Carter shooed it away with his paddle, and when a reporter learned of the story months later the press gleefully dubbed the animal the killer rabbit.

At Camp David in 1978, Carter spent 13 days shuttling between Israel's Menachem Begin and which other leader?

Anwar Sadat agreed to put off the core questions about the Palestinians, a concession that alienated members of his own delegation and Arab leaders across the Middle East.

Which cause did Rosalynn Carter make her signature issue as first lady and for decades afterwards?

Mental health was her cause from the start: she served as active honorary chair of the President's Commission on Mental Health because nepotism law barred her from chairing it.

The Carter Center was founded in 1982 in partnership with which Atlanta school?

Emory University made Carter a University Distinguished Professor in 1982, the year the center was founded, and granted him tenure in 2019 after 37 years of service.

Carter's book illustrated by his granddaughter Sarah Chuldenko was a collection of what?

'Always a Reckoning and Other Poems' (1995) collected Carter's poetry, with drawings by his granddaughter Sarah Elizabeth Chuldenko; subjects range from his Plains boyhood to Rosalynn.

The Plains church where Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter married in 1946, her family's church, belonged to which denomination?

Methodist: the couple wed on 7 July 1946 in the church Rosalynn's family attended, having met through her friendship with Jimmy's sister.

Which song did Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood perform at Jimmy Carter's state funeral in January 2025?

'Imagine', John Lennon's song, was a reprise: the couple had sung it at Rosalynn Carter's memorial service in 2023 and repeated the tribute at Washington National Cathedral.

After a mid-1979 cabinet shake-up, whom did Carter name chairman of the Federal Reserve?

Paul Volcker took over the Fed in August 1979 when G. William Miller moved to Treasury; his tight-money policy eventually broke double-digit inflation but deepened the recession that helped sink Carter in 1980.

Which senator challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination?

Ted Kennedy announced three days after the embassy in Tehran was seized and came close to unseating Carter; to win his endorsement, Carter had to accept much of Kennedy's platform.

Carter's 15 July 1979 address on a national 'crisis of confidence' became known as what?

Carter never used the word, but his televised address was quickly dubbed the 'malaise' speech; days later he asked his whole cabinet to offer their resignations and accepted several.