60 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.