Interesting Facts about Our Presidents

Adam's Apple

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Apr 25, 2004
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20 Things You Didn't Know About U.S. Presidents

1. In warm weather, 6th president of the United States John Quincy Adams customarily went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River before dawn.

2. 9th U.S. president William Henry Harrison was inaugurated on a bitterly cold day and gave the longest inauguration speech ever. The new president promptly caught a cold that soon developed into pneumonia. Harrison died exactly one month into his presidential term, the shortest in U.S. history.

3. John Tyler, 10th U.S. president, fathered 15 children (more than any other president)--8 by his first wife, and 7 by his second wife. Tyler was past his seventieth birthday when his 15th child was born.

4. Sedated only by brandy, 11th president of the United States James Polk survived gall bladder surgery at the age of 17.

5. 15th U.S. president James Buchanan is the only unmarried man ever to be elected president. Buchanan was engaged to be married once; however, his fiancée died suddenly after breaking off the engagement, and he remained a bachelor all his life.

6. Often depicted wearing a tall black stovepipe hat, 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln carried letters, bills, and notes in his hat.

7. 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson never attended school. His future wife, Eliza McCardle, taught him to write at the age of 17. (Bonus fact about Andrew Johnson: He only wore suits that he custom-tailored himself.)

8. Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, died of throat cancer. During his life, Grant had smoked about 20 cigars per day.

9. Both ambidextrous and multilingual, 20th president of the United States James Garfield could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other.

10. Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States, underwent a secret operation aboard a yacht to remove his cancerous upper jaw in 1893.

11. The teddy bear derived from 26th U.S. president Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear with her cub while on a hunting trip in Mississippi.

12. William Taft, 27th president of the United States, weighed more than 300 pounds and had a special oversized bathtub installed in the White House.

13. Warren Harding, 29th U.S. president, played poker at least twice a week, and once gambled away an entire set of White House china. His advisors were nicknamed the "Poker Cabinet" because they joined the president in his poker games.

14. Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, had chronic stomach pain and required 10 to 11 hours of sleep and an afternoon nap every day.

15. Herbert Hoover, 31st U.S. president, published more than 16 books, including one called Fishing for Fun-And to Wash Your Soul.

16. 32nd president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt was related, either by blood or by marriage, to 11 former presidents.

17. The letter "S" comprises the full middle name of the 33rd president, Harry S. Truman. It represents two of his grandfathers, whose names both had "S" in them.

18. Military leader and 34th president of the U.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to cook; he developed a recipe for vegetable soup that is 894 words long and includes the stems of nasturtium flowers as one of the ingredients.

19. 40th president of the United States Ronald Reagan broke the so-called "20-year curse," in which every president elected in a year ending in 0 died in office.

20. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, and his wife Laura got married just three months after meeting each other.


http://ca.encarta.msn.com
 
Wasn't cocaine a widely available and legal drug in the 1700s? Wasn't opium and cannibus too? I wonder how many presidents were hopped up on cocaine?

Didn't Washington grow hemp on his plantation?

Which president was it who shot a guy in a duel? Andrew Jackson right?

Is it true that these guys drank liquor all the time?
 
Hagbard Celine said:
Wasn't cocaine a widely available and legal drug in the 1700s? Wasn't opium and cannibus too? I wonder how many presidents were hopped up on cocaine?

Didn't Washington grow hemp on his plantation?

Which president was it who shot a guy in a duel? Andrew Jackson right?

The guy 'shot' in a duel was not president, but rather Secretary of Treasury under Washington, an obscure bloke, Alexander Hamilton. :rolleyes:

All the drugs, yes, especially opium were available. Wouldn't be so concerned about presidents, nothing there in records, which are VERY good, but Congress?
 
No, I think he's right.

If I remember correctly Jackson was in a duel, got shot, kept standing, and proceeded to blow his opponent away. The bullet he took was lodged in him for the rest of his life.

Supposedly Washington had some textile grade hemp on his estate, yes.

And several of the founding fathers were big boozers, especially Franklin.

As for drugs, the most popular story concerning that was all the pain killers JFK was on during his entire Presidency.
 
Jackson was involved in many duels. A duel on May 30, 1806 against Charles Dickinson was over some unflattering remarks made about Jackson's wife. In this duel Jackson was wounded. After he was hit, he took aim and fired at Dickinson. Jackson's gun misfired. As Dickinson was forced to stand his ground, Jackson took aim once again and killed Dickinson. The bullet that wounded Jackson was lodged near his heart and could not be safely removed. He carried that bullet in his chest for the rest of his days.

http://www.potus.com/ajackson.html

Jackson was a tough son-of-a-bitch.
 
Jackson was a tough son-of-a-bitch.

Damn straight. I have to agree with that one.

But I think Kathianne is right too. Didn't Alexander Hamilton shoot and kill Aaron Burr?

You know ol' Georgie boy was smoking some herb on his farm.
 
My point is I don't believe they were breeding strains of Cannabis sativa that produced less useable hemp and more THC and then cultivating these strains, seperating out males, and curing it to be smoked. I think they were just growing industrial grade hemp. In which case no one was smoking anything.
 
The main reason for all that hemp was that every sailing ship
in the world used ropes, with some warships probably using tons
of it, and hemp is the raw material for ropes.

The use of hemp for intoxication seems to have been quite
rare in the Western World, until it absolutely exploded in
the 1960s.
 
Abe Lincoln had his son exumed so that he could see him again.

Hemp can also be used to make just about everything else too. Like shoes, socks, shirts, shorts, pants, undershirts, hats, sheets, drapes, hemp-wicker furniture, eye patches, underwear, rugs, tapestries, lotion, oil, candles...the list goes on and on.
 
Hagbard Celine said:
You're probably right, but it would've been a lot cooler if they did! Am I right? Am I right? :beer:
"And Martha would have a big fat bowl packed for him when he got home."

USViking said:
The main reason for all that hemp was that every sailing ship
in the world used ropes, with some warships probably using tons
of it, and hemp is the raw material for ropes.
I believe the sails were all, or mostly, hemp as well.

Hemp was also used to make cheap paper back then.

Not sure if it's true, but they say early drafts of the Constitution were written on hemp paper, though the final versions were written on a smoother, more expensive, kind of paper.
 
Abraham Lincoln suffered from debillitating depression. In Arkansas and other southern states Lincoln was not even on the ballot, you had to write his name on it yourself. This served as an excellent deterent because many southern people were unable to write at the time.
 
Here are some presidential tidbits that I was unaware of (from the book Which President Killed A Man? by James Humes), and which you might find interesting:

Q: Which president had two siblings who served jail sentences?

A: Bill Clinton's half brother Roger served in prison for selling drugs and was pardoned by Clinton when he left office in January 2001. Not so well known is half sister Diane Dwire Welch, who did time for a bank robbery in Virginia. Presidential candidate Clinton kept her secreted in a motel under an alias during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Q: Which president had a marriage annulled?

A: A justice of the peace married Congressman John F. Kennedy and Palm Beach socialite and divorcee Durie Malcolm in February 1947. Marrying a divorcee was not acceptable to Kennedy's father, Joseph, so the marriage was quiety annulled; and the page announcing the marriage in the Palm Beach County registry was expunged. The event is listed in the Blauvelt family genealogy. The bride's mother's family were Blauvelts.
 
Adam's Apple said:
Q: Which president had two siblings who served jail sentences?

A: Bill Clinton's half brother Roger served in prison for selling drugs and was pardoned by Clinton when he left office in January 2001. Not so well known is half sister Diane Dwire Welch, who did time for a bank robbery in Virginia. Presidential candidate Clinton kept her secreted in a motel under an alias during the 1992 presidential campaign.

well, now we can say all 3 are criminals, since Clinton committed pergery(sp?). Nice family. :rolleyes:
 
Lincoln's brother in law, a Confederate general, fell in battle.

He and his wife had been the Lincolns' guests in the White House
before the war began.

His wife and baby were the Lincolns' guests there after his fall.
 
well, now we can say all 3 are criminals, since Clinton committed pergery(sp?). Nice family.

Clinton didn't commit perjury, he was impeached, tried and found not guilty.

You're going to have to face that the fact that he's squeeky clean baby!

He's Slick Willie! :dance:
 
Hagbard Celine said:
Clinton didn't commit perjury, he was impeached, tried and found not guilty.

You're going to have to face that the fact that he's squeeky clean baby!

He's Slick Willie! :dance:
Not exactly, though CNN tries to make it 'all about sex':

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/19/clinton.lewinsky/


Clinton admits misleading testimony, avoids charges in Lewinsky probe
President's law license suspended for 5 years

January 19, 2001
Web posted at: 5:06 p.m. EST (2206 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton will leave office free of the prospect of criminal charges after he admitted Friday that he knowingly gave misleading testimony about his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a 1998 lawsuit.
Ray
Independent Counsel Robert Ray

Under an agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, Clinton's law license will be suspended for five years and he will pay a $25,000 fine to Arkansas bar officials. He also gave up any claim to repayment of his legal fees in the matter. In return, Ray will end the 7-year-old Whitewater probe that has shadowed most of Clinton's two terms.

"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and am certain my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false," Clinton said in a written statement released Friday by the White House...
 

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