For most of us, President’s Day (it’s Monday, by the way) has become just a day when we don’t get mail and the stock market is closed.
This is pretty sad considering we have holidays to honor candy and ghosts.
Maybe a few interesting facts about some of our leaders would help get us in a festive spirit, at least enough to put up a President’s Tree or hide President’s eggs.
Here we go, with primary research from Webster’s The Book of Presidents:
•Prior to his inauguration, an attempt was made to kidnap or kill George Washington b the Tory governor and the Tory mayor of New York City and one of Washington’s bodyguards.
•When he declined to run for a third term, Washington urged Americans to abandon political parties.
•John Adams is known as the Father of the United States Navy.
•Thomas Jefferson introduced the custom of shaking hands instead of bowing to White House guests, as his predecessors had done.
•Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, listing three accomplishments, but did not include being President.
•James Monroe was the last President who was Revolutionary War leader.
•Of the five Presidents who took part in the Revolution, three of them — Jefferson, Adams and Monroe — died on a Fourth of July.
•John Q. Adams served 17 years in Congress — after his term as President.
•It is believed Andrew Jackson participated in 100 duels.
•Jackson served an assassination attempt — the first on a sitting President — by a fellow who fired two pistol shots from six feet away.
•John Tyler was known behind his back as His Accidency.
•Tyler was elected to serve in the Confederate Congress, but died before it convened.
•Andrew Johnson never attended school or received any formal education.
•Johnson was elected to the Senate after leaving office.
•Rutherford Hayes’ wife Lucy was the first First Lady with a college degree.
•Grover Cleveland was the only President married in the White House and his bride the youngest First Lady (21).
•Benjamin Harrison actually lost the popular vote to Cleveland in 1888, but won the electoral vote.
•Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also the first President to ride in an automobile, fly in an airplane and the first to submerge in a submarine.
•William Howard Taft served as a Supreme Court Justice for nine years following his Presidency.
•Warren Harding invented the word “normalcy.”
•It’s common knowledge that Franklin Roosevelt was related to Theodore Roosevelt. But, he was also kin to Washington, John and John Q. Adams, James Madison, Martin Van Buren, William and Benjamin Harrison, Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant and Taft.
•John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, won a Pulitzer Prize.
•In the 1972 election, Richard Nixon won the largest number of popular votes in the nation’s history [up to that time].
•Gerald Ford turned down offers to play professional football in order to become an assistant football and boxing coach at Yale while he attended law school.
[Note: Image is John Tyler]