Q 01/05

George W. Bush was which number president of the United States?

A) 40th

B) 41st

C) 42nd

D) 43rd

Answer · why

D) 43rd

The 43rd president is the son of the 41st, and the numbers stuck as family shorthand: his 2014 biography of his father is titled 41: A Portrait of My ...

Q 02/05

Where was Bush when an aide whispered that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center?

A) In a Florida classroom

B) Aboard Air Force One

C) At Camp David

D) In the Oval Office

Answer · why

A) In a Florida classroom

In a Florida classroom, he stayed in his seat while the reading lesson went on, and later wrote that he had not wanted to rattle the kids.

Q 03/05

Bush was born in 1946 in which city?

A) Midland, Texas

B) New Haven, Connecticut

C) Houston, Texas

D) Hartford, Connecticut

Answer · why

B) New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut, was home only because his father was a student at Yale; when George was two the family left for the oilfields of West Texas.

Q 04/05

Bush's paternal grandfather Prescott Bush held which office?

A) Governor of Connecticut

B) Secretary of the Navy

C) Mayor of Houston

D) U.S. senator from Connecticut

Answer · why

D) U.S. senator from Connecticut

U.S. senator from Connecticut was a second career: Prescott Bush spent decades as a Wall Street banker, then won a vacant seat in a 1952 special elect...

Q 05/05

Bush's sister Robin died at the age of three in 1953 of what?

A) Polio

B) Pneumonia

C) Meningitis

D) Leukemia

Answer · why

D) Leukemia

Leukemia was diagnosed in the spring and she died within months; George, just seven, had not been told how ill his sister was.