As I procrastinate working on said applications, I bring to you a blog post on presidents because a love for weird history facts is just another one of my strange quirks that I would only share in my Internet life because y'all don't judge. At least, y'all usually don't.
I don't guarantee the accuracy of any of these facts because most of them I have read on the Internet over the years, so don't hold me on this. Hold off on your lawyers if in ten years you find out something on here is not right. Hear my warning now.
1. Our first president, George Washington, was also the wealthiest president. Although we seem to regard Washington as being very humble and down to Earth, he had a net worth of $525 million and his plantation consisted of five separate farms on 8,000 acres of farmland.
2. Thomas Jefferson — our third president — invented the swivel chair, an obviously fundamental and important item of the American office.
3. William G. Harding reportedly took his KKK oath in the Green Room of the White House.
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| The casual historical racism adds such a beautiful touch, obviously. Source. |
4. John C. Calhoun was the only person to serve as Vice President for two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
5. Martin Van Buren was the first president who was born an American citizen. Before that, all presidents had been born British subjects.
6. Ronald Reagan is the only president to have ever gotten a divorce.
7. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech was so inspiring to President Bill Clinton that he memorized it.
8. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president to speak on television. It's kind of ironic because this was a HUGE deal, and today very few American citizens tune in when the president has a televised speech.
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| Source. |
10. No president has ever been an only child. Despite this, there are four who have had only half siblings (so some do consider them to be only children), Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama (he had 10 half siblings!).
Because of time and the various applications that must be filled out, I must end here, but most certainly there will be more to come. Anyone know of any interesting presidential facts not mentioned above? Or perhaps your country's leaders have some sort of strange facts you'd like to share?
Have a fabulous day.
Wow, vomiting on the Prime Minister of Japan... O-O It is kind of ironic that no one listens to the debates or presidential speeches on TV; I only tuned into debate from last week while surfing on my laptop and even then, I wasn't fully paying attention.
ReplyDeletexoxo Morning
Vomiting on anyone is quite embarrassing yet alone someone so very important. And hey, at least you bothered to tune in (even if you were only half listening)!! Thanks for stopping by. :)
DeleteI laughed when I read about Bush vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister, I know it wasn't funny, but I'm studying Japanese at university and every time we greet a person of authority (teacher, oral examiner, etc) we have to bow to them, and it's one of my worst fears that on a stressful exam day I will vomit on or fall over onto said examiner :P You need very good etiquette and respect when talking to Japanese people, so I imagine that incident caused a real strain on international relations, and didn't help America's image :P
ReplyDeleteThese facts were all very interesting, I'd heard that George Washington was a real freedom fighter who himself inherited 300 slaves, which I thought was fairly ironic.
A fun fact about Ireland is that we were the first country to elect two subsequent female presidents! We haven't had a female Taoiseach (Prime Minister) yet, but it might happen in the future. For some reason we have a President, Taoiseach, Cabinet, Senate and local governments in a country with less than 5 million people, so of course there are a lot of stories about the freaky stuff various government figures get up to.
Good luck with your college applications, and once again, great post :)
Don't worry I think the fact that Bush Sr. vomitted on the Prime Minister of Japan is absolutely hilarious as well. Of course I wasn't alive when it happened (as I'm sure it wasn't funny in the moment), but the first time I heard the fact I immediately had to YouTube the video so I coud laugh some more.
DeleteAlso, it's funny that you mention that it's ironic that Washington was a freedom fighter, yet he owned slaves, as we have had quite a few presidents who have either owned, bought, and/or inherited slaves, and not all of them agreed with the institution. Historians believe we have had roughly 12 slave owning presidents, but the number varies as to exactly how many as we had as tales float amid in our history with no historical record except the word of mouth. Also, not all of them owned slaves whilst in office. I have heard that although Washington had some 300 slaves working on his farm, he ordered in his will to have them all be freed after both he and his wife died.
It's very fascinating that your country has both a prime minister and a president (not to mention kudos to women in power). We have yet to have either a woman president or vice president, but surely the time will come.
Glad you enjoyed my post. :)