100 Fun Facts About Vice President

Who was the first vice president of the United States?

John Adams served as the first vice president, under George Washington from 1789 to 1797, and complained to his wife Abigail that it was 'the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived'.

Which vice president broke a record for Senate tie-breaking votes that had stood since the 1830s?

Kamala Harris: the Senate was split 50-50 when she took office, and in December 2023 she cast her record-breaking 32nd tie-breaking vote.

Which vice president is credited with the quip 'What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar'?

Thomas R. Marshall: in the most repeated version, he whispered it to a Senate clerk while a senator droned on about what the country needed.

Before the Twelfth Amendment, who became vice president?

The presidential runner-up: so the 1796 election left a Federalist president serving with his chief rival, a Republican, as vice president.

Which body chose the winner after Jefferson's 1800 electoral tie?

The House: members needed 36 ballots to elect Jefferson, and the stalemate led to the Twelfth Amendment.

Which sitting vice president killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel?

Aaron Burr, then Jefferson's vice president, shot Hamilton at Weehawken, New Jersey, on 11 July; he was later tried for treason over a western scheme and acquitted in 1807.

Which vice president signed, as Massachusetts governor, the contorted 1812 district map lampooned as a salamander?

Elbridge Gerry: the Federalist press mocked the salamander-shaped district as the 'Gerry-mander', and a year later he became Madison's vice president.

Which vice president served under the sixth and seventh presidents, then became the first to resign the office?

John C. Calhoun: he quit late in 1832, weeks after South Carolina's nullification ordinance, to defend nullifying the federal tariff from a Senate seat.

Which vice president was chosen by the Senate in 1837 after no candidate won an electoral majority?

Richard M. Johnson: Virginia's electors backed Van Buren for president but voted for William Smith for vice president, leaving Johnson one vote short.

Which vice president set the precedent that a veep becomes full president when the president dies?

John Tyler: mocked as 'His Accidency', he insisted he was fully president rather than an acting one, and both houses of Congress recognized his claim.

Which vice president became president in September 1901 after McKinley was shot by an anarchist?

Theodore Roosevelt, vice president for barely six months, took the oath in Buffalo on 14 September 1901 after McKinley died of wounds from Leon Czolgosz's shooting eight days earlier; he was 42.

Which vice president took the oath of office in Cuba in 1853 and died without serving?

William R. King, Franklin Pierce's running mate, took the oath near Matanzas, Cuba, on 24 March 1853, hoping the climate would ease his tuberculosis; he died in Alabama on 18 April 1853.

Which Maine politician was Abraham Lincoln's first-term vice president?

Hannibal Hamlin, a former Maine senator and governor, was vice president from 1861 to 1865, then dropped from the 1864 ticket in favour of Southern Unionist Andrew Johnson.

Which vice president, a former Speaker of the House, was implicated in the Crédit Mobilier railroad bribery scandal?

Schuyler Colfax: the scandal ruined his political career, and he left office under a cloud in 1873 and never ran again.

Which vice president, trying to return to his hotel suite during a fire, was challenged by a fire marshal?

Calvin Coolidge: when he said he was the vice president, the fire marshal asked, 'What are you vice president of?'

Which vice president shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize and composed the melody of 'It's All in the Game'?

Charles Dawes: his plan lent Germany American money to pay its war reparations, and in return France ended its occupation of the Ruhr.

Which Hoover vice president was the first Native American to hold the office?

Charles Curtis: yet as a congressman he wrote the 1898 Curtis Act, which helped strip tribes of their land rights in Indian Territory.

Which vice president reportedly called the job 'not worth a bucket of warm spit'?

John Nance Garner: once Roosevelt's ally, he broke with him over the 1937 court-packing plan and ran against him for the 1940 nomination.

Which FDR vice president was denied renomination in 1944, opening the door for Truman?

Henry Wallace: he was dropped for Truman at the 1944 convention, and within months Roosevelt's death made Truman president instead of Wallace.

Which secret wartime effort was Harry Truman first briefed on after becoming president?

The Manhattan Project: within months of learning of it, Truman had to decide whether to use the atomic bomb against Japan.

Which vice president's grandson came up with the nickname 'Veep'?

Alben Barkley: once he told the story at a press conference the name stuck, but his successor refused to use it, saying it was Barkley's.

Which vice president took temporary charge after Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack?

Richard Nixon: he presided over cabinet meetings but took care not to seem to seize power, and his restraint won him glowing reviews.

Which vice president drafted an order giving himself 'general supervision' over national defense programs?

Lyndon Johnson: Kennedy never signed it, though he did make Johnson chair of the Space Council.

Which vice president missed presiding over the 1969 electoral count because he was at a funeral in Norway?

Hubert Humphrey: mourning Trygve Lie, the UN's first secretary-general, he never had to announce his own defeat to Congress.

Which vice president resigned in October 1973 after pleading no contest to a tax evasion charge?

Spiro Agnew: the plea deal kept him out of prison with a $10,000 fine, and his resignation letter was delivered while he was in a Baltimore courtroom.

Which amendment, ratified in 1967, lets a president fill a vice presidential vacancy by nomination?

Twenty-fifth: Kennedy's assassination left the vice presidency empty, and the amendment let a president fill such a vacancy instead of waiting for the next term.

Who is the only person to serve as president without ever being elected president or vice president?

Gerald Ford: within a month of taking office, he pardoned his predecessor.

Which former four-term New York governor was appointed vice president in 1974?

Nelson Rockefeller: he had chased the Republican presidential nomination again and again before reaching the vice presidency by appointment instead.

On the grounds of which Washington institution is the vice president's official residence?

The Naval Observatory: the house there had been home to the Navy's top admiral until Congress made it the vice president's residence in 1974.

Which vice president was the first to live full-time in the official vice presidential residence?

Walter Mondale: his predecessor already owned a Washington home and hardly used the house.

Which former vice president later served as the Confederacy's secretary of war?

John Breckinridge: after the war he fled through Cuba to England and lived in exile in Canada until a blanket pardon let him come home.

Which was the only state carried by Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 Democratic ticket?

Minnesota: the presidential nominee's home state stayed with the ticket while Reagan carried the other 49 states.

Which sitting vice president was elected president in 1988, the first to do so since 1836?

George H. W. Bush: in the 1980 primaries he had mocked Reagan's tax plans as 'voodoo economics', yet Reagan still picked him as his running mate.

Which vice president corrected a schoolboy's 'potato' to 'potatoe' at a 1992 spelling bee?

Dan Quayle: the student had spelled it correctly, but the card Quayle had been handed carried the wrong spelling.

Which former vice president shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?

Al Gore: seven years after winning the popular vote but losing the 2000 election, he shared the prize with the UN's climate panel.

Which vice president accidentally shot lawyer Harry Whittington during a 2006 quail hunt in Texas?

Dick Cheney: the shooting became public only the next day, after the ranch's owner told a local newspaper.

To which state did the 2000 Republican VP nominee move his vote from Texas to satisfy the Twelfth Amendment?

Wyoming: the nominee switched his voter registration back to the state he had represented in Congress, since Texas electors couldn't back two Texans.

Which future vice president was the US minister to France while the Statue of Liberty was being built?

Levi P. Morton: he had turned down the 1880 vice-presidential slot, which went to Chester Arthur, who became president when Garfield died.

Which state did Joe Biden represent in the Senate for 36 years before becoming vice president?

Delaware: weeks after he won in 1972, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash, and he took the oath at his sons' hospital bedside.

Which state did Mike Pence govern before becoming Donald Trump's vice president?

Indiana: before winning a House seat there in 2000, Pence hosted a conservative talk radio show, The Mike Pence Show.

In March 2021, President Biden put his vice president in charge of which issue?

Migration at the US-Mexico border: on her first foreign trip as vice president, in Guatemala, she told would-be migrants, 'Do not come.'

JD Vance rose to national fame with which 2016 memoir before becoming vice president?

Hillbilly Elegy: Vance joined the Marines after high school and served in Iraq, then went on to Ohio State and Yale Law School.

What call sign does a plane use while it is carrying the vice president (but not the president)?

Air Force Two: even the president's own 747 takes that call sign when it carries the vice president instead.

Which sitting vice president died in October 1912, days before the election, while on Taft's ticket?

James S. Sherman: he died of kidney disease less than a week before the election, so his electoral votes went to Nicholas Murray Butler.

Which vice president became president in 1850 and helped push that year's compromise through Congress?

Millard Fillmore: Taylor's whole cabinet left when he took over, and the compromise passed as separate bills after Clay's omnibus bill died.

Which McKinley vice president was so influential he was nicknamed 'Assistant President'?

Garret Hobart: when he died in office in 1899, McKinley told his family, 'No one outside of this home feels this loss more deeply than I do.'

Which Senate title does the Constitution give the vice president?

President of the Senate: presiding there was long the job's main duty, though modern vice presidents serve chiefly as advisers to the president.

Whose death in 1812 left the vice presidency vacant for the first time?

George Clinton: with no way to fill the post, the vice presidency stayed empty until the next inauguration in 1813.

Which vice president, as Grover Cleveland's assistant postmaster general, fired many Republican postal workers?

Adlai E. Stevenson: the firings made Republicans his enemies, and decades later his grandson and namesake ran twice for president.

Which honor for vice presidents did an 1886 Senate resolution establish in the Capitol?

A portrait bust: the collection was begun to fill the empty niches around the gallery of the new Senate Chamber.

During the 2020 vice presidential debate, what landed on Mike Pence's head and inspired a popular Halloween costume?

A fly settled on Pence's head and upstaged both candidates. In the following days it was tweeted about more than 700,000 times, and parody accounts appeared in its name.

Which Hollywood actress perched on a piano played by Vice President Harry Truman at the National Press Club in 1945?

Lauren Bacall, then 20, lounged on the upright while Truman played for servicemen at the club's canteen. The stunt was part of a studio publicity push for the young star.

Which vice president gave a rambling speech at Abraham Lincoln's 1865 inauguration after drinking whiskey that morning?

Andrew Johnson, hung over from a party in his honor, took two stiff drinks before the ceremony and rambled as Lincoln looked on. Lincoln later assured critics that his new deputy was no drunkard.

Which actress won a record six consecutive Emmys for playing Vice President Selina Meyer in an HBO political comedy?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the lead-actress prize six years running for the part. The nominations it brought also carried her past Lucille Ball for the most earned by a regular in comedy series.

Which honor did Barack Obama surprise Vice President Joe Biden with at a White House farewell ceremony in January 2017?

The Medal of Freedom he received carried the rare 'with distinction' grade, and Obama called him a brother as he presented it. Biden said he had no inkling it was coming.

Marlon Bundo, a pet of Mike Pence's family who starred in four children's books, was what kind of animal?

A rabbit, Marlon Bundo was nicknamed BOTUS, for Bunny of the United States, and had a popular Instagram account. He was the first of his species to fly on the vice president's official plane.

Which Alaska governor became the first Republican woman nominated for vice president, as John McCain's running mate?

Sarah Palin had been elected two years earlier, at 42, as Alaska's youngest governor and the first woman in the job. She was only the second woman on a major-party national ticket.

Which entertainment lawyer became the first 'second gentleman' of the United States when his wife took office in 2021?

Doug Emhoff was also the first Jewish spouse of an American vice president. While in the role he taught a course on entertainment law disputes at Georgetown's law school.

Which vice president took over the presidency in September 1881 when James Garfield died weeks after being shot?

Chester A. Arthur, long dismissed as a creature of New York's patronage machine, surprised reformers by signing the Pendleton Act on civil service hiring. He heard of Garfield's death at home on Lexington Avenue.

In which Netflix drama does congressman Frank Underwood scheme his way to the vice presidency and then the Oval Office?

House of Cards was the first series a studio produced for Netflix, reworking a 1990 British political drama. Underwood rises from House majority whip to the top job by season three.

Which Andrew Jackson vice president went on to become the first president born after the Declaration of Independence?

Martin Van Buren was born in 1782 in Kinderhook, New York, a village where most residents spoke Dutch as their main language. He joined Jackson's ticket for the landslide re-election of 1832.

Which Wisconsin congressman, Mitt Romney's running mate in 2012, later became Speaker of the House?

Paul Ryan took the gavel in 2015 after John Boehner resigned, three years after losing on the national ticket. He had accepted Romney's offer in front of the battleship USS Wisconsin in Norfolk.

Mike Pence's tie-breaking Senate vote in 2017 confirmed which Education Secretary, a first for any Cabinet nominee?

Betsy DeVos was confirmed 51–50 after two Republican senators joined every Democrat in opposing her. No Cabinet nominee had ever needed the vice president's vote to get through.

Joe Biden became the first vice president of which religion when he was sworn in beside Barack Obama in 2009?

Catholicism had reached the presidency with John F. Kennedy in 1961 but never the number-two job before Biden. He later became only the second Catholic president as well.

Which Connecticut senator became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket as the Democrats' 2000 running mate?

Joe Lieberman ran for re-election to his Senate seat at the same time and kept it when the national ticket lost. In 2006 he held it again under his own Connecticut for Lieberman party label.

JD Vance became the first vice president to have served in which military branch, where he worked as a journalist?

The Marine Corps took Vance in 2003, straight out of high school, and gave him a public affairs job. He is also the first veteran of the Iraq War to hold the vice presidency.

Which vice president, elected on the Republican ticket in 1904, is the namesake of a city in the interior of Alaska?

Charles Fairbanks was an Indiana senator who sat on an 1898 commission with Britain that took up the Alaska boundary dispute. He ran for his old job again in 1916, on Charles Evans Hughes's losing ticket.

Which Ulysses Grant vice president, a onetime shoemaker called the 'Natick Cobbler', died after a stroke in the Capitol?

Henry Wilson was born Jeremiah Jones Colbath, named for a rich neighbor in the vain hope of an inheritance, and legally changed his name at 21. He joined Grant's ticket for the 1872 re-election race.

Which New York congressman became vice president in 1877 even though Rutherford Hayes had privately asked who he was?

William Wheeler was so obscure that Hayes wrote to his wife that he was ashamed to ask who Wheeler was. Delegates chose him only after taking seven ballots to settle on Hayes.

Which vice president, who died during Grover Cleveland's first year in office, appears on a $10 silver certificate?

Thomas Hendricks is the only vice president who never became president to appear on American paper money. The note is nicknamed the 'tombstone' for the shape of the frame around his engraved likeness.

Harry Truman was a senator from which state when Democrats picked him as their vice presidential nominee in 1944?

Missouri sent Truman to the Senate in 1934, after his haberdashery in Kansas City had failed and he had served as a county judge. He was vice president for only 82 days.

In 2016 Barack Obama put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of a 'moonshot' task force to defeat which disease?

Cancer had killed Biden's son Beau the year before, and the research funding that followed was named in Beau's honor. Biden relaunched the effort when he reached the White House himself.

When a president is tried in the Senate after impeachment, who presides instead of the vice president?

The Chief Justice is named for the task in the Constitution, and Salmon P. Chase did the job at the 1868 trial. The document never says who presides if a vice president is the one accused.

Which patriotic march, once the president's own anthem, is played to announce the vice president at official events?

Hail, Columbia served as a de facto national anthem through the 19th century before taking on its supporting role. It follows four ruffles and flourishes when the vice president is introduced.

After being kept uninformed as vice president, Harry Truman made the office a member of which advisory body in 1949?

The National Security Council gained the vice president along with a seat at Cabinet meetings and regular security briefings. Truman wanted no successor to arrive as unprepared as he had been.

Which Senate officer stands third in line for the presidency, directly behind the Speaker of the House?

The president pro tempore is by custom the majority party's longest-serving senator. A 1947 law restored the post to the line of succession, which Cabinet members had filled alone for six decades.

As vice president from 1797 to 1801, Thomas Jefferson wrote what kind of book, one the House still uses today?

A rulebook for debates, his Manual of Parliamentary Practice was the first American book on the subject, written for the Senate he presided over. The House wrote it into its own rules in 1837.

While vice president in 1798, Thomas Jefferson secretly drafted which protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts?

The Kentucky Resolutions declared the acts unconstitutional and were adopted by that state's legislature. James Madison secretly wrote a companion set for Virginia at the same time.

JD Vance became the first vice president from which generation when he took office at age 40 in 2025?

Millennials reached national office with Vance, who was born in August 1984. He had spent just two years in the Senate when he was sworn in.

In February 2020, Donald Trump named Mike Pence to chair the White House task force on which health emergency?

The coronavirus response had first been led by health secretary Alex Azar, whom Pence replaced as chair after about a month. Deborah Birx soon joined as response coordinator.

In August 2008, Barack Obama's campaign broke the news that Joe Biden was his running mate by which method?

A text message from the Obama campaign carried the announcement on August 23, 2008. Biden was a sitting senator at the time and had sought the top of the ticket himself that year.

Which former Buffalo Bills quarterback was the Republican nominee for vice president in 1996?

Jack Kemp led the Bills to two straight AFL championships and was the league's most valuable player in 1965. After nine terms in Congress he served as secretary of housing and urban development.

Which senator left George McGovern's 1972 ticket within three weeks when his past electroshock therapy became public?

Thomas Eagleton had checked himself into hospital three times in the 1960s for exhaustion and depression. McGovern asked him to withdraw and began a fresh search for a partner.

Which California governor, Thomas Dewey's 1948 running mate, later wrote the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board opinion?

Earl Warren lost that race to Harry Truman, then reached the Court five years later as Dwight Eisenhower's appointee. He announced his retirement in 1968.

By tradition, what do vice presidents sign in their ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building?

A desk drawer holds the autographs: many past users of the room's mahogany pedestal desk have signed their names inside it. The desk has served every vice president since the mid-1970s.

Which 2000 political thriller stars Joan Allen as a senator whose nomination for vice president comes under attack?

The Contender brought Joan Allen a Best Actress Oscar nomination, with Jeff Bridges also nominated as the president who picks her. Gary Oldman both co-starred and co-produced.

The 1912 electoral votes of William Taft's newly deceased running mate went to the president of which university?

Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, was designated to collect the eight electoral votes the ticket won, from Utah and Vermont. He later shared the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize with Jane Addams.

Usha Vance, whose husband JD Vance took office in 2025, became the first second lady of which religion?

Hinduism is the faith of her parents, Telugu immigrants from Andhra Pradesh, and she is also the first Indian American in the role. She was born in San Diego County in 1986.

Which Secret Service code name, sharing an initial with wife Jill's 'Capri', belongs to former vice president Joe Biden?

Celtic sits beside family names that all start with the same letter: Jill Biden is Capri and their son Hunter is Captain. By tradition the agency gives every member of one family a shared initial.

Which Texas senator, Michael Dukakis's running mate in 1988, went on to serve as Secretary of the Treasury?

Lloyd Bentsen is best remembered for a debate put-down telling his younger rival he was no Kennedy. Dukakis had hoped he would deliver Texas, but the ticket lost the state.

What is the background color of the vice president's official flag, in contrast to the dark blue of the president's?

White has been the background of every version of the flag, which carries the vice president's coat of arms between four blue stars. The present design dates from a 1975 redesign.

Which Massachusetts statesman twice refused the vice presidency, only for both presidents concerned to die in office?

Daniel Webster refused places beside William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, joking of the second offer that he did not wish to be buried before he was dead. Either post would have made him president.

Under the succession law in force from 1886 to 1947, which Cabinet officer was next in line after the vice president?

The Secretary of State led the list because Cabinet members were ranked by the age of their departments. The 1886 law had taken congressional leaders out of the line entirely.

Which retired admiral and Vietnam prisoner of war was Ross Perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential election?

James Stockdale received the Medal of Honor for his leadership during more than seven years of captivity. He learned he would be in the televised debate only a week beforehand.

Which Tennessee senator won the 1956 Democratic vice presidential nomination in a floor vote over John F. Kennedy?

Estes Kefauver had become famous for leading a much-publicized Senate investigation into organized crime. The presidential nominee left the choice to the delegates, and the ticket lost 41 states that November.

Which James Monroe vice president wrecked his own finances by borrowing to fund New York's defense in the War of 1812?

Daniel Tompkins was the only vice president of the 19th century to serve two full terms. In poor health and deep in debt, he spent much of that time away from Washington.

Which James Polk vice president broke a Senate tie to pass an 1846 tariff cut that his home state Pennsylvania opposed?

George M. Dallas had long backed the protective tariffs that Pennsylvania's coal and iron interests demanded. By his own count he cast thirty tie-breaking votes in four years.

Which Virginia senator, fluent in Spanish from a mission stint in Honduras, was the Democrats' 2016 running mate?

Tim Kaine once delivered a whole Senate floor speech in Spanish, the first ever given there in a language other than English. He had interrupted law school to help Jesuit missionaries run a school.

Harry Truman had been vice president for 82 days when the president died at which Georgia retreat in April 1945?

Warm Springs was where the president kept a cottage known as the Little White House, near the polio treatment resort he had bought in the 1920s. He was three months into his fourth term.

Which North Carolina senator, a former personal injury lawyer, was the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2004?

John Edwards had won a $25 million verdict that was the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. Four years earlier he had been on the shortlist for the same job.