60 Fun Facts About Obscure Presidential

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

His book Profiles in Courage won a Pulitzer Prize, and his PT-109 rescue earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

Which president is the only one who never married?

His orphaned niece Harriet Lane served as White House hostess; he claimed he stayed single out of devotion to a fiancée who had died young.

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

He had appeared at WrestleMania 23 in 2007 and was the only president to reach the office with neither government nor military service.

Which president was the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review?

He spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia after his mother married an Indonesian graduate student.

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

Patent No. 6,469 was granted in 1849; he later gave lectures on the patent system and worked as a patent lawyer on the mechanical reaper case.

Which president was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize?

The 1906 Peace Prize rewarded his brokering of the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War.

Harry Truman's middle initial 'S' stands for what?

It honoured both grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, without choosing between them.

Which president is the only one to have married inside the White House, in the Blue Room in 1886?

His bride, Frances Folsom, was 21, making her the youngest First Lady in history; he had been her late father's law partner and had watched over her upbringing.

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

The 335-pound president was also the first president buried at Arlington National Cemetery and the only one to later serve as Chief Justice.

Which president never went to school and learned his trade as a tailor's apprentice?

Born into poverty, he was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy and rose from alderman to the White House.

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

The device worked on other people but failed on the president, possibly confused by the metal bedsprings beneath him.

Which president was the first to fly in an aeroplane, a four-minute Wright flight in 1910?

He was out of office by then, having handed over to Taft; the flight took place at an air meet in St. Louis.

Which president was born in Kinderhook, New York, in a community that spoke Dutch as its first language?

The town nickname 'Old Kinderhook' is one popular theory for the origin of the expression 'OK'.

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

The 'Centennial President' and his wife often slept with the lights on; staff turned them off in the morning.

What were John Adams's last words on 4 July 1826, unaware his old rival had died hours earlier?

Both Founders died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration; the friend he named had in fact died several hours before him at Monticello.

Which piece of furniture is Thomas Jefferson credited with creating?

He also sold his personal library to the government for $23,950 to restart the Library of Congress after the British burned it in 1814.

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

The Mount Vernon distillery, run by enslaved workers, was one of the largest in the young country; the site has been rebuilt and makes rye again.

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

Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, was subdued; the 67-year-old president reportedly went at him with his cane.

Which president was born William Jefferson Blythe III, three months after his father died in a car crash?

He took his stepfather's surname as a teenager, and later discovered his parents' marriage had been bigamous.

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

Elected to the Senate at 30, he commuted from Delaware by train for 36 years and picked up the nickname 'Amtrak Joe'.

Which president was the youngest US Navy pilot when commissioned in 1943, and was shot down over Chichijima?

Several airmen shot down in the same raid were captured and executed; he was rescued by a submarine and went on to captain Yale's baseball team.

Which president was sworn in by his own father, a notary public, by kerosene lamp at 2:47 a.m.?

News of Harding's death reached the family farm at Plymouth Notch, Vermont in the middle of the night; the new president took the oath in the parlour and went back to bed.

Which president was known as 'His Accidency'?

The Whigs expelled him from the party and nearly his whole cabinet resigned; he fathered fifteen children, the last of them when he was 70.

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

He had spent 17 years as a congressman after leaving the White House, leading the fight against the gag rule on anti-slavery petitions.

One president went blind in his left eye while in office, a fact kept secret for years. What caused it?

He kept sparring in the White House until a partner hit him hard enough to detach a retina; the fact was hidden for years.

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

The deal that ended Reconstruction gave him a one-vote Electoral College win; his teetotal White House earned his wife the nickname 'Lemonade Lucy'.

Which president was the third to die on the Fourth of July, in 1831?

Adams and Jefferson had both died on the same day five years earlier; Liberia's capital, Monrovia, is named for this president.

The first president's dentures were never wood. Which of these materials WAS used?

His dentist John Greenwood used brass, lead, gold, animal teeth and human teeth; by his 1789 inauguration he had a single natural tooth left.

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

The golf-mad general later had his golf balls painted black so he could play in the snow at Camp David.

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

Born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, he was renamed after his stepfather and later survived two assassination attempts 17 days apart.

Which president was the first born in a hospital?

The Georgia peanut farmer also filed a formal report saying he had seen a UFO in October 1969.

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

He went on to co-own the Texas Rangers, and after leaving office took up painting portraits of veterans and world leaders.

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

The Iowa-born Quaker orphan developed gold mines near Tianjin and became a millionaire before he ever ran for office.

Baby Ruth's maker insisted the bar was named after whose daughter, not the ballplayer?

Ruth Cleveland had died of diphtheria in 1904, sixteen years before the bar appeared, which is why most people assume the story was invented to dodge paying Babe Ruth.

Which president was the only one named Time magazine's Person of the Year three times?

1932, 1934 and 1941; he remains the only president to serve more than two terms.

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

He promised one term, added Texas, Oregon and the Southwest to the map, and died three months after leaving office.

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

He served under future president Rutherford Hayes; he was shot in Buffalo in 1901, the third president assassinated in 36 years.

Which president filed a report saying he had seen a UFO in 1969?

He was governor of Georgia at the time and remained a trained nuclear engineer who had served under Admiral Rickover in the submarine service.

Which president's memoirs did Mark Twain publish at an unheard-of 70 percent royalty?

Dying of throat cancer and broke after a Wall Street swindle, he finished the book days before his death; Julia Grant received about $450,000.

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

He turned it into the town's only daily; his death in office spared him the Teapot Dome scandal that later wrecked his reputation.

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

Political opponents later called him the 'Buffalo Hangman'; he had reservations about the job but refused to pass it to someone else.

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

The tailor from Tennessee never attended school; he was the first president impeached and later returned to Washington as a senator.

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

The Kentucky medical examiner found nothing suspicious; 'Old Rough and Ready' most likely died of a stomach illness after a hot Fourth of July.

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

The former preacher served nine terms before 1880; he was shot after only four months in office.

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

It was one of his last foreign trips; he resigned two months later.

Where was a sitting president's jaw tumour secretly removed in 1893?

Surgeons worked aboard the Oneida as it sailed off Long Island; the public did not learn the full story until one of them published an account in 1917.

The tenth president was born in 1790. In what year did his last surviving grandchild die?

Harrison Ruffin Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, born when the president was 63; the span from the president's birth to his grandson's death was 235 years.

Zachary Taylor, elected in 1848, said he would have backed Henry Clay in 1844 if he had done what?

The career soldier had never cast a ballot; his remains were exhumed in 1991 to test a theory that he was poisoned with arsenic, which came back negative.

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

As a boy he had bought a share in a circulating library to educate himself; the couple stocked the White House with books for the first time.

Which president's White House remodel included a fifty-foot Louis Comfort Tiffany glass screen?

The dapper 'Gentleman Boss' refused to move in until the building was redecorated; the screen was ripped out in a later president's 1902 renovation.

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

Congress passed a special act so the tuberculosis-stricken King could be sworn in near Matanzas; he died the following month without ever performing a duty.

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

He affirmed on a Bible; only one predecessor had deviated before, swearing on a book of law instead.

Why did the tenth president rename his Virginia plantation 'Sherwood Forest'?

His mostly Whig neighbours mocked him by electing him overseer of roads in 1847; he took the job seriously and made them regret it.

Which president faced rumours in 1880 that he had been born in Ireland, and then in Canada?

Lawyer Arthur P. Hinman spread the stories to suggest he was ineligible; he was actually born in Fairfield, Vermont.

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

In 1878 he arbitrated a border dispute and awarded the Gran Chaco region to them, hence Villa Hayes and Presidente Hayes.

The 13th president was the first chancellor of which institution, serving until his death in 1874?

He helped found it in 1846, two years before being elected vice president on Zachary Taylor's ticket.

On what was the earliest surviving recording of a sitting president's voice made, in 1889?

Gianni Bettini recorded Benjamin Harrison, whose White House was also the first wired for electricity.

Which president was the last to be born a British subject, before the Declaration of Independence?

Born in 1773 at Berkeley Plantation, Virginia, he went on to serve the shortest presidency, dying 31 days into his term.

What did Zachary Taylor likely consume at a hot July 4, 1850 ceremony, days before he died?

He had been laying the cornerstone of the Washington Monument; gastroenteritis killed him on July 9, aged 65.

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

The first reception did include wine, but her husband was dismayed by drunken behaviour at diplomats' parties and banned it.