Presidential Trivia
President Ronald Regan kept a sign on his desk that said, "It can be done."
President Harry Truman kept a sign on his desk that said, "The Buck Stops Here."
President Lyndon Johnson made history when he appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to the Supreme Court.
Thirty minutes after suddenly becoming President, Harry Truman was briefed about the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb. Before then the Vice President, and virtually the entire USA, didn't have a clue that the Project even existed.

President Roosevelt had briefed Winston Churchhill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, years earlier about the project and recently, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been learned that the Soviets had at least 26 channels into the Los Alamos complex and knew exactly what was going on! Also there is ample evidence that Hitler was in on the secret or at least knew that the U.S. was working on an Atomic Bomb.

One of John F. Kennedy's favorite poems was I Have A Rendezvous With Death by Alan Seeger.
Only two Presidents have lived beyond there 90th birthdays, and then just barely. John Adams and Herbert Hoover, each were 90 at the time they died.
President Franklin Pierce died of cirrhosis of the liver after years of heavy drinking.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to leave the continental United States while in office. In 1906 he went to Panama to look into the Panama Canal Project.
President James K. Polk is well remembered for his hard work as President and for adding vast amounts of land to the United States. Another political accomplishment remains unequalled in American history. He is the only Speaker of the House ever elected President.
Of the five Presidents to serve in the Civil War, Rutherford B. Hayes was the only one to be wounded in action.
In recent years it has become fashionable to speak politically correct, and with buzz words, acronyms, jargon, etc. Now days the federal government couldn't function without code words and names. For example, the Secret Service doesn't even refer to the President by name or title but rather by code. The President is POTUS which means "President Of The United States" and FLOTUS for "First Lady Of The United States." Then there is The Football, that small attache case containing launch codes for nuclear weapons, which is carried about by a military aide who is with the President at all times.
President William Howard Taft called the White House "the loneliest place in the world." He loathed the placed and despised the job. After leaving the Presidency he was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court which he loved. Years later he remarked that he could not even remember what it was like as President.
All five of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's children got divorced.
President Fillmore refused to accept an honorary degree -- Doctor of Civil Law -- from Oxford University. He said, "no man should accept a degree that he cannot read."
This story has existed for many years, but Robert Scarry, author of the biography "Milliard Fillmore," says that Oxford U. claims that it has no record of such an offer.
When new countries emerge in the world they expect a lapse of time before they are officially recognized by other nations. In 1948 the new state of Israel was proclaimed and President Truman extended recognition 11 minutes later.
During his Presidency Lyndon Johnson was known to go skinny dipping in the indoor Whitehouse pool even though female Whitehouse staffers might still be working in the nearby area. It was hardly a precedent, however, because 150 years earlier President John Quincy Adams took cold baths almost daily in the Potomac river in his birthday suit.
Only 35 words make up the Presidential oath of office.
John Quincy Adams is the only president to be elected to the House of Representatives after serving as President.
Andrew Johnson is the only president to be elected to the Senate after serving as President.
Ulysses S. Grant, broke and in debt from bankruptcy, rushed to finished the story of his life only a few weeks before his death from cancer. The book brought in $450,000 - $500,000 for his family after his death.
Robert Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln, had personal contact with three of the four presidents who were killed while in office. He vowed never again to have direct contact with any president because he felt he was bad luck to them. The fourth president to be killed in office, John F. Kennedy, is buried in Arlington National Cemetary --- and so is Robert Lincoln.
A secret society was formed to guard the tomb of Abraham Lincoln when a plot to steal his body was discovered.
The only President to survive the infamous "zero year jinx" is Ronald Reagan... But he was ALMOST killed by an assassin.
President Jimmy Carter admitted having lust in his heart during an interview with Playboy magazine.
Gerald Ford is the only president to have been the victim of an assassination attempt by a female. It not only happened once, but a few weeks later another female made a second attempt. Both women are still in prison.
President Zachary Taylor's body was recently exhumed because many felt that his death was not natural and that he may have been poisoned. No trace of poison was found.
When President Zachary Taylor heard southerners talk of secession he made a promise that if they went through with secession he would consider them traitors. He said that he would personally take charge of the military, track them down and hang them!
Ten years after President Zachary Taylor promised to hang secessionist, his only son Richard Taylor joined to fight with the south in the Civil War. He rose to the rank of general. [Many years earlier, one of Taylor's daughters was married to young Lt. Jefferson Davis but she died of malaria a few months after the wedding.]
Grover Cleveland was a hangman. While Sheriff of Erie County, New York, from 1871 to 1873, he personally pulled the hanging trap on two murderers.
When it became evident that Ronald Reagan would be the Republican nominee for the 1980 election his campaign staff wanted to name former President Gerald Ford as his Vice Presidential running mate because the polls showed Ford to be the strongest candidate. George Bush was selected only after talks with Ford's team fell through.
Conforming to the provisions of the 25th amendment of the constitution, Vice-President George Bush had Presidential powers transferred to him for eight hours while President Ronald Reagan was undergoing surgery for cancer. The date: July 13, 1985.
March, 1930, William Howard Taft's funeral became the first Presidential funeral to be broadcast on the radio.
Ronald Reagan won the 1984 election with an electoral college spread of 525 to Walter Mondale's 13 for the second largest triumph in history. George Washington still holds the record with his 1789 unanimous victory.
How times have changed. A few years ago a Senator from Missouri was forced to remove his name from consideration as a Vice Presidential candidate because it was revealed that he had made a few visits to a head shrink. Yet, Warren G. Harding became President even though he had suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 24 and had spent several weeks in a sanitarium!
President Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy Carter, was arrested on two occasions as a student activist. She was later dismissed from Brown University for academic reasons.
Herbert Hoover was elected President on November 2, 1928 to win his first elective office, the only President to ever take such a short cut.
Although he won many other elections throughout his career, Gerald Ford became Vice President in 1973, and then President in 1974 without being elected to either office.
During the 1960 election campaign Joseph P. Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy, was asked for more money for his son's campaign and replied, "I will not pay for a landslide." John F. Kennedy won the election by one of the smallest popular vote margins in history.
During a remodeling of the White House, President Harry S. Truman observed an assassination attempt from an upstairs window of the Blair House while White House guards shot it out with the attackers on the street below.
Andrew Johnson's wife, Eliza McCardle, was only 16 years old when they were married on May 17, 1827.
When slaves aboard the slave ship Amistad mutinied during their journey from Africa they were prosecuted. In 1841, Member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts and Ex-President, John Quincy Adams argued on their behalf before the U.S. Supreme Court... and won his case.
President Lyndon B. Johnson often went skinny dipping in the indoor White House pool and would sometimes invite male visitors to join him even while female staffers worked nearby.
Harry S Truman always insisted that the "S" in his name WAS his middle name.
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