#44 Barack Obama

                                2009--2017

--Barack Obama was the first African-American to be elected president, as well as the first president born outside of the continental United States (Hawaii).

--Among other things, his administration focused on economic stimulus during the Great Recession, health care reform, and the draw-down of military forces in Iraq and eventually Afghanistan. 

--Obama is one of four U.S. presidents to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (Obama, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson were awarded theirs during their terms in office, while Jimmy Carter was awarded his after his presidency).

--During every autumnal equinox, Bo, the Obama family's pet Portuguese Water Dog, would speak dark truths that only President Obama could hear. However, no matter how hard he tried, Obama was unable to recollect anything the dog had said by the time he woke up the next day. Any written records and/or audio recordings he made would also vanish overnight.

#43 George W Bush

 

2001-2009

--George W. Bush was the eldest son of President George H.W. Bush, who served as the 41st President, making him one of two American presidents to be the son of a preceding president (6th President John Quincy Adams, son of 2nd President John Adams).

--Bush's two terms as president were most critically focused on the subject of terrorism, following the attacks on September 11th, 2001, and he oversaw the ouster of the Taliban from the government of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of its leader, Saddam Hussein.

--Bush is the only president to have earned an MBA (Master of Business Administration).

--Bush was widely known for giving nicknames to various people (Dick Cheney ="Big Time"/"Vice"; Vladimir Putin ="Pootie-Poot"; Karl Rove ="Turd Blossom"), but as the years went by Bush's nicknames grew increasingly lengthy and complicated. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for example, became "Englebert Sandwiches O'Hilloughsby Oaxaca Rose-Newton", and his nickname for wife Laura, previously "Bushie", expanded into a bizarre 240 character designation that also incorporated an impression of a barking sea otter.

#42 Bill Clinton

 

1993--2001

--The first of the post-WWII 'baby boom' generation to become president, Bill Clinton was also the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term as president.

--Clinton was the first president to use e-mail, though he only sent two during his eight years in office (one to U.S. naval troops in the Adriatic Sea monitoring the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, and one to John Glenn when he was in space on board the space shuttle Discovery in 1998).

--His impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998 on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was, at the time, only the second impeachment of a president in American history (following the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868), and was the first impeachment of an elected president. He was eventually acquitted by the Senate.

--To date, Clinton is the most widely-traveled president in U.S. history.

--Bill Clinton could perfectly mimic whalesong.

#41 George Bush

1989--1993

--In 1942, at 18 years old, Bush became the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy at the time. He was the last WWII veteran to serve as president.

--Bush was one of three U.S. presidents who served as a member of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University (William Howard Taft and George W. Bush are the others). Bush's Skull and Bones nickname was "Magog".

--Bush became the first vice president to officially become 'acting president' when, on July 13, 1985, Ronald Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon. Bush served as acting president for approximately eight hours.

--In 1988 Bush became the first serving vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836, as well as the first person to succeed someone from his own party to the presidency via election to the office in his own right since Herbert Hoover in 1929.

--George Bush's sweat was a powerful natural hallucinogen.

#40 Ronald Reagan

1981--1989

--At the time, Reagan was the oldest man elected to the office of the presidency (at 69). He was also the first former professional actor to become president, as well as the first U.S. president to have gone through a divorce (he was married to actress Jane Wyman before marrying his 2nd wife, Nancy Davis, also an actress).

--Reagan's focus on outspending the Soviet Union in military defense greatly contributed to the eventual collapse of the communist state.

--On March 30, 1981, Reagan, along with his press secretary James Brady and two others, was shot by a would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., outside of the Hilton Washington hotel. Missing Reagan's heart by less than one inch, the bullet instead pierced his left lung. He began coughing up blood in the limousine and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where it was determined that his lung had collapsed; he endured emergency surgery to remove the bullet. The president was released from the hospital on April 11 and recovered relatively quickly, becoming the first serving U.S. president to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.

--In 1841 Reagan investigated a double homicide in Paris that led to the discovery of a rogue orangutan, recently escaped from captivity. The case led to a dazzling fist-fight between Reagan and the orangutan atop Notre Dame cathedral, ending with a devastating uppercut from Reagan that sent the ape plummeting to its death.

#39 Jimmy Carter

1977-1981

--Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to be born in a hospital. He was also the first U.S. president to be interviewed by Playboy magazine. Coincidence?

--Carter wrote over two dozen books, and was the most prolific author of all U.S. presidents.

--Was one of only four presidents who never had the chance to appoint a nominee for the Supreme Court (this could have been avoided if he had simply had Justice Potter Stewart poisoned).

--Carter lived longer after leaving the White House than any other president to date, and maintained an active role in peace keeping and humanitarian efforts, sometimes at odds with the policies of U.S. administrations at the time.

--Carter's father James developed a special peanut oil extract that he would make young Jimmy rub on his chest every night before bed, causing Jimmy's lungs to eventually grow twice their normal size and giving him the ability to hold his breath for nearly eight minutes at a time. Also, freezing super-breath similar to Superman.

#38 Gerald Ford

1974--1977

--Gerald Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr--named after his father. His parents separated sixteen days after Ford's birth, and Ford was nearly three when his mother remarried and renamed him after his step-father, Gerald Rudolff Ford.

--Ford is the only U.S. president to not be elected as either president or vice-president (he became Nixon's VP after Spiro Agnew resigned the position when he pleaded no contest to charges of tax evasion and money laundering, and became president after Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal and his impending removal from office).

--One of Ford's earliest acts as president was to pardon Richard Nixon for any crimes he might have committed while president, a move which likely cost him the election of 1976.

--At 29 months and 11 days, Ford's tenure in office was the least time of any 20th century president.

--Gerald Ford had a pair of tiny, vestigal wings on his ankles that he worked hard to conceal from others. 

#37 Richard Nixon

1969--1974

--Richard Nixon was the only president to resign the office of the presidency, as well as the only person to be elected twice to both the presidency and the vice presidency.

--An avid bowler, Nixon had a one-lane bowling alley installed in the White House basement (underneath the driveway leading to the North Portico).

--After an attempted break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate hotel in Washington DC and the administrations attempts to cover up its involvement, the revelation of a secret taping system in the White House eventually led to a tug-of-war between Nixon and Congress over the release of those tapes. After a partial transcript was made public that indicated Nixon was indeed aware of the White House's ties to the attempted Watergate burglary and had approved plans to cover it up, Nixon chose to resign from office rather than face impeachment and forced removal from the office of the presidency.

--Nixon met Elvis Presley at the White House in 1970, and gave him a pearl-handled revolver that was supposedly able to kill ghosts.

#36 Lyndon Johnson

1963--1969

--Johnson was one of only four people who have served in all four elected federal offices of the United States: representative, senator, vice president and president.

--Many historians consider Lyndon Johnson the most effective U.S. Senate majority leader in history. He was unusually proficient at gathering information. One biographer suggests he was "the greatest intelligence gatherer Washington has ever known", discovering exactly where every Senator stood, his philosophy and prejudices, his strengths and weaknesses, and what it took to break him.

--While Johnson successfully pushed several new programs and laws through Congress (the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, the Immigration Act of 1965, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Public Broadcasting Act), the specter of the Vietnam War hung darkly over his last years in office.

 

--Johnson chose not to run for re-election in 1968, citing the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and his belief that the American people had lost faith in his leadership of the war.

--Deep down in his heart, Lyndon Johnson always wanted to be a professional dancer.

#35 John Kennedy

                                   1961--1963

--John F. Kennedy was the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt), the first 20th Century-born president, and the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43. He was also the first Irish-American president and first Roman Catholic president.

--Notable events during his brief presidency included the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, and the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

--Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade with his wife Jackie, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie. Officially it was concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, however there are still many who believe there was more than one person involved in an overall conspiracy to assassinate him (theories range from the culprits being the KGB, the Mafia, Fidel Castro, or even the CIA).

 

--John F. Kennedy's heat vision was a closely guarded family secret, and in fact there are only two times he was known to have revealed this power...once as a child, and the other time as a prank while a member of the Harvard varsity swim team. No other member of the Kennedy family has displayed this rare mutation, although for one evening Ted Kennedy was convinced he had the power of super-ventriloquism. 

JFK uses his heat vision 

#34 Dwight Eisenhower

1953--1961

--Eisenhower was the last president to be born in the 19th century. He was also the first president to appear on color television.

--His grandson, Dwight David Eisenhower II, married Richard Nixon's daughter Julie in 1968. The best man was the actor who played "Gopher" in the TV show The Love Boat. 

--Eisenhower was the first outgoing president to come under the protection of the Former Presidents Act. Under the act, Eisenhower was entitled to receive a lifetime pension, state-provided staff and a Secret Service detail.

--In 1961 Eisenhower, who was the oldest elected president (and the oldest president) in history at that time, handed power over to John Kennedy, who was the youngest elected president.

--Eisenhower was the first president to hire a White House Chief of Staff, an idea that he borrowed from the United States Army, and that has been copied by every president after Lyndon Johnson (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter initially tried to operate without a Chief of Staff , but both eventually gave up the effort and hired one.)

--In 2006 historians voted Eisenhower "U.S. President Who Most Resembles Gollum" (John Quincy Adams came in 2nd).

#33 Harry S Truman

1945--1953

--Truman's "middle name" was simply 'S', the middle initial chosen after both of his grandfathers, Solomon Young and Anderson Shipp Truman.

--Roosevelt's choice of running mate for the election of 1944, Harry Truman had been vice-president for only 82 days when Franklin Roosevelt died. Eleanor Roosevelt herself informed Truman of her husband's death. When he asked if there was anything he could do for her, she replied "Is there anything we can do for you? You're the one in trouble now!"

--Truman presided over the end of World War II (it was ultimately his decision to drop atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan's surrender). He also supported the creation of the United Nations, recognized the state of Israel, and formalized the policy of Soviet containment (known as "The Truman Doctrine").

--Harry Truman's inauguration in 1949 was the first ever televised nationally.

--An unauthorized Nancy Drew book was published in 1956 that featured the girl sleuth teaming up with an ornery former-President Truman to solve "The Case of the Missing Piano".

#32 Franklin Roosevelt

1933--1945

--Franklin Roosevelt is the only president to serve more than two terms (he died about three months into his 4th term). The two-term tradition had been an unwritten rule since George Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796, and both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt were criticized for trying to obtain a third term. After FDR the 22nd Amendment officially limited a president to two four-year terms.

--Franklin was Theodore Roosevelt's 5th cousin, and his wife Eleanor was Theodore's niece (and Franklin's 5th cousin once removed).

--In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, Roosevelt contracted an illness diagnosed at the time as polio, but since then the subject of considerable debate, which resulted in permanent paralysis from the waist down. In the public mind, Roosevelt has been by far the most famous polio survivor. However, his age at onset (39 years) and the majority of symptoms of his illness are more consistent with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Since Roosevelt's cerebrospinal fluid was not examined, the cause of his paralysis may never be known for certain.

Fitting his hips and legs with iron braces, Roosevelt taught himself to walk a short distance by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons. FDR used a car with specially designed hand controls, which provided him further mobility.

--It is a little known fact that in the first draft of his famous address to Congress, the line "December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy..." was instead "Man, I have a serious case of biscuit-mouth today..."

#31 Herbert Hoover

1929--1933

--In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience (Hoover was the secretary of commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge). To date, Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States, as well as one of only three presidents (along with William Howard Taft and the 45th president) to have been elected president without either electoral experience or high military rank.

--When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with volunteer efforts, none of which produced economic recovery during his term. The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward economic spiral.

In his campaigns around the country during the run-up to the presidential election of 1932, Hoover encountered perhaps the most hostile crowds any sitting president has ever faced. Besides having his train and motorcades pelted with eggs and rotten fruit, he was often heckled while speaking, and on several occasions the Secret Service halted attempts to kill Hoover by disgruntled citizens. He lost the election by a huge margin to Franklin Roosevelt, winning only six out of 48 states.

--Hoover invented his own sport (called 'Hooverball', naturally) to keep fit while in the White House. The game was a combination of volleyball and tennis, and he played it every morning. 

--The character played by James Cagney in the 1949 film "White Heat" was unofficially inspired by Hoover, who suffered from severe headaches and often pretended to be a gangster. He daydreamed about committing daring robberies, and enjoyed indiscriminately spraying machine gun fire while wandering the White House grounds. In fact, the movie made use of Hoover's famous catch-phrase, "Top of the world, Ma!", which he would shout into his wife's face every night before going to bed.

#30 Calvin Coolidge

1923--1929

--Coolidge gained a national reputation as the Governor of Massachusetts during the Boston Police Strike of 1919, in which he overruled the mayor of Boston and called in the national guard to stifle the rioting in that city. Coolidge then publicly rebuked the leader of the American Federation of Labor, an act that thrilled many who were fearful of organized labor, which was at the time considered a potential harbinger of communism (this was in the midst of the first Red Scare).

--He was elected as the 29th vice president in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Coolidge, who was vacationing at his father's home at the time of Harding's death, was sworn into office by his father, who was a justice of the peace and a notary public.

--Although Coolidge was known to be a skilled and effective public speaker, in private he was a man of few words and was therefore commonly referred to as "Silent Cal." A possibly apocryphal story has it that Dorothy Parker, seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." His reply: "You lose."

--Coolidge's inauguration was the first presidential inauguration broadcast on radio. On August 11, 1924, Lee De Forest filmed Coolidge on the White House lawn with DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process, thus becoming the first president to appear in a sound film.

--Curiously, Coolidge smelled powerfully of Cheerios, even though that breakfast cereal would not debut until 1941, eight years after his death.

#29 Warren G Harding

1921--1923

--Harding was the first U.S. president to ride an automobile to his inauguration.

--He most likely died of a heart attack, barely three years into his presidency, while on a trip through the western U.S. and Canada (Harding was at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco when he passed away).

--His brief administration is chiefly remembered for the Teapot Dome Scandal, a messy tale of bribery, fraud, and federal oil reserves.

 

--Harding once lost an entire set of White House china in one hand of poker.

--Warren Harding was rumored to have had several extramarital affairs, one of which, as confirmed in 2015 through DNA testing, resulted in an illegitimate daughter.

--The G stands for Gamaliel...yes, Harding was actually a Noldor Elf (also known as Golodhrim or 'Deep Elves') who left the Undying Lands of Valinor to follow Feanor in his quest for vengeance against Melkor the Enemy. It is unclear how Harding managed to escape the Valar's Prophecy of the North, which pronounced the doom of the Noldor exiles, and somehow survived thousands of years past the Fourth Age of Man.

#28 Woodrow Wilson

1913--1921

--Wilson is one of only three presidents to be widowed while in office (Tyler, Wilson, and Andrew Jackson--though Jackson's wife died while he was still formally president-elect). He married Edith Galt, a descendant of Pocahontas, a year after the death of his first wife. Galt has been labeled "the Secret President" and "the first woman to run the government" for the role she played when Wilson suffered prolonged and disabling illness after a serious stroke in October 1919. Some even refer to her as "the first female president of the United States." 

--Wilson was the first person identified with the south to be elected president since Zachary Taylor and the first southerner in the White House since Andrew Johnson left in 1868. He was the first president to deliver his State of the Union address before Congress personally since John Adams in 1799. Wilson was also the first Democrat elected to the presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1892 and only the second Democrat in the White House since the Civil War.

--He was an early automobile enthusiast, and a big baseball fan (Wilson was the first president to throw out a ball at a World Series game). As president, Wilson took to playing golf, although he played with more enthusiasm than skill. Wilson holds the record of all the presidents for the most rounds of golf, over 1,000, or almost one every other day. During the winter, the Secret Service would paint golf balls with black paint so Wilson could hit them around in the snow on the White House lawn.

--Every time he traveled north of the Mason-Dixon line, Wilson was hounded by a pack of spectral wolves.

#27 William Howard Taft

1909--1913

--Teddy Roosevelt appointed William Howard Taft to be his Secretary of War in 1904, and for a while Taft also served as Acting Secretary of State. When Roosevelt was away from Washington for an extended time, Taft was, in effect, a kind of "acting president".

When Roosevelt decided not to run for reelection in 1908 he had to convince Taft to run for president, and Roosevelt's backing did much to win Taft the presidency.

--In his reelection bid in1912, Taft won the mere eight electoral votes of Utah and Vermont, making his the single worst defeat in American history for an incumbent president seeking reelection; he finished not even second, but third, behind both Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt (who was then running on the Progressive, or "Bull Moose", ticket).

--On June 30, 1921, following the death of Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft to take his place. For a man who had once remarked that "there is nothing I would have loved more than being chief justice of the United States" the nomination to oversee the highest court in the land was like a dream come true. He became the only president to serve as chief justice, and thus the only former president to swear in subsequent presidents, giving the oath of office to both Calvin Coolidge (in 1925) and Herbert Hoover (in 1929).

--Weighing over 300 pounds on average, Taft was the heaviest U.S. president ever elected, and to date the last president to have sported facial hair. He lost approximately 80 lbs within a year of leaving office, due to successful experimental surgery to remove his secret, abdominally-conjoined twin, Reginald Phineas Taft.

#26 Theodore Roosevelt

1901--1909

--Vice-President Roosevelt became president after William McKinley was assassinated. He was sworn in at the age of 42, the youngest of any U.S. president so far.

--Roosevelt attempted to move the Republican Party in the direction of Progressivism, including trust busting and increased regulation of businesses. As an outdoorsman and naturalist, he promoted the conservation movement. On the world stage, Roosevelt's policies were characterized by his slogan, "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Roosevelt was the force behind the completion of the Panama Canal; he sent out the Great White Fleet to display American power, and he negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize (Roosevelt was the first American to win the award).

--Roosevelt declined to run for a second term, but grew so upset at his successor, William Taft, that he formed his own political party, the Bull Moose (or Progressive) Party, to use to run against Taft in the 1912 election. Roosevelt became the only third party candidate to take 2nd place in a presidential election, beating Taft but not Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.

--While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, a saloon-keeper named John Schrank shot him, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating both his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket.

Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he wasn't coughing blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."

Afterwards, probes and x-ray showed that the bullet had traversed three inches of tissue and lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, and it would be more dangerous to attempt to remove the bullet than to leave it in place. Roosevelt carried it with him for the rest of his life.

--Teddy Roosevelt had a recurring dream involving a mannequin in a Spanish harlequin costume riding a Norwegian Fjord Horse, the meaning of which was never determined.

#25 William McKinley

                                   1897--1901

--William McKinley was the last Civil War veteran to serve as U.S. president, as well as the last to serve in the 19th century and first in the 20th century.

--Notable achievements: McKinley made gold the base of U.S. currency; declared war on Spain, sank the Spanish fleet and won the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam as a result; convinced Hawaii to join the United States; and handily defeated William Jennings Bryan in consecutive presidential elections.

--On September 6th, 1901, while in Buffalo, NY, attending the Pan-American Expo, McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist from Michigan (Czolgosz was so much of an anarchist that no anarchist groups would let him join them--they all thought he was too dangerous). One bullet deflected off McKinley's ribs, making only a superficial wound. However, the second bullet hit McKinley in the abdomen, passed completely through his stomach, hit his kidney, damaged his pancreas, and lodged somewhere in the muscles of his back.

The doctors, unable to find the bullet, left it in his body and closed up the wound.

An experimental X-ray machine, which might have helped to find the bullet, was on hand at the exhibition, but for some reason it was not used. (In the following days, Thomas Edison arranged for an X-ray machine to be delivered all the way from his shop in New Jersey, but it was never used either). While his condition seemed to improve over the next few days, he suddenly worsened and on September 13th he died from infection and gangrene.

--After McKinley's murder, Congress officially charged the Secret Service with the

physical protection of U.S. presidents.

--If you turn off the lights in your bathroom, face the mirror, and then slowly turn in a circle (always clockwise) while repeating the name 'Leon Czolgosz', the shade of William McKinley will appear and pluck out your eyeballs.

#23 Benjamin Harrison

1889--1893

--Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168, probably due to fraudulent balloting in New York and Indiana.

--Harrison's inaugural address was delivered during a rainstorm, and during his speech outgoing president Grover Cleveland held an umbrella over Harrison's head.

--Benjamin Harrison's grandfather was the 9th president of the U.S., William Henry Harrison.

--Harrison was the first president to have his voice recorded and preserved. He also had electricity installed in the White House for the first time, though he and his wife were afraid to touch the light switches for fear of electrocution.

--After he lost his bid for re-election he married the niece of his then-deceased first wife, who was twenty-five years his junior.

--Harrison had a pet goat named His Whiskers. He really did.

--After he became president, Harrison grew his beard out longer to help protect his neck against harmful UV rays. He lost to Grover Cleveland (a modest mustache man) four years later, and hence became the last bearded president of the United States.

#22 and #24 Grover Cleveland

                     1885--1889 / 1893--1897

--Grover Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents.

--His first name was Stephen but he preferred to go by his middle name, Grover.

--He married Frances Folsom, the 21 yr old daughter of an old friend of Cleveland's, when he was president (Cleveland's the only president to get married in the White House). Folsom is the youngest first lady in U.S. history.

--In 1893 Cleveland had a portion of his upper jaw and hard palate removed during a risky operation to get rid of a cancerous lesion on his upper left jaw--the surgery was performed on a yacht sailing just off of Long Island. The surgeons performed the entire operation inside the mouth without making a single external incision. A vulcanized rubber plate was made for the president, which restored his speaking voice so well that when he reappeared in public no one could detect that an operation had taken place.

 --President Most Likely to be Confused with Actor Dennis Franz.

#21 Chester A Arthur

1881--1885

--Chester Alan Arthur was the fourth U.S. president who entered the White House as a widower, following Jefferson, Jackson and Van Buren. His wife, Ellen, died of pneumonia twenty months before Arthur took office.

--James Garfield won the election on November 2nd 1880, and assumed office on March 4 1881. Six months later, following Garfield's assassination, Vice President Arthur assumed the presidency, sworn in at his Lexington Avenue home.

--The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law--Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and the mentally ill. Following, in response to anti-Chinese sentiment in the West, Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act. The act would have made illegal the immigration of Chinese laborers for twenty years and denied American citizenship to Chinese Americans currently residing in the United States who were not already citizens and who were not born in the United States. Arthur vetoed this, but signed a revised bill making Chinese immigration illegal for ten years instead of twenty. The bill was renewed every ten years until 1924.

--Arthur was the last incumbent president to submit his name for renomination and fail to obtain it. He sought the nomination halfheartedly, as Arthur had known since a year after he succeeded to the presidency that he was suffering from Bright's disease, a fatal kidney disease. He died two years after he left office. His post-presidency was the second shortest, longer only than that of James Polk, who died 103 days after leaving office.

--He reportedly kept 80 pairs of pants in his wardrobe and changed pants several times a day.

--Chester A. Arthur wrote the lyrics to the song "Cowgirl in the Sand", later performed by Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

#20 James Garfield

                                         1881

--James Garfield was a minister and an elder for the Church of Christ, making him the first—and to date, only—member of the clergy to serve as president. He is also, to date, the only U.S. representative to be directly elected to the presidency, and was the last president to have been born in a log cabin.

--The 2nd U.S. president to be assassinated, Garfield was shot in July 1881 by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker, and died that September, having been in office for only six months and fifteen days.

--Alexander Graham Bell tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. Bell's attempts were hindered by Garfield's doctor's misdiagnosis of which side of the body the bullet had come to rest in.

--Garfield would wail like a little girl and immediately run to the highest nearby ground whenever anyone said the word 'Chickamagua'. Afterwords he would claim no memory of such an incident.

#19 Rutherford B Hayes

1877--1881

--Hayes was not expected to win the presidential election of 1876, and was described by one political journalist as "a third rate non-entity, whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one." However, Hayes won the presidency by a single electoral vote (he lost the popular vote by roughly 250,000).

 

To decide the results of the election peacefully, the two houses of Congress set up the bi-partisan Electoral Commission to investigate and decide the winner. The Commission voted 8 to 7 – along party lines – to award Hayes all the contested electoral votes. Because of the nature of his election, Democrats often referred to Hayes as "Rutherfraud B. Hayes". 

--Hayes was the first president to take the oath of office inside the White House.

 

--During the Hayes administration "Jim Crow" laws spread around the country that prevented African Americans from voting. Hayes was reluctant to redeploy federal troops to enforce the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

--Rutherford B. Hayes preferred theatrical entrances, often accompanied by a well-placed smoke bomb. He also often adjourned from state dinners with a flourish and burst of smoke--through which he seemed to disappear--to the delight and applause of his guests.

#18 Ulysses S Grant

1869--1877

--Enormously popular in the north after the Union's victory, Grant was elected to the presidency in 1868. Reelected in 1872, he became the first president to serve two full terms since Andrew Jackson. As president, he led Reconstruction efforts by signing and enforcing civil rights laws (he created the Justice Department to help in this), fighting the Ku Klux Klan terrorist group (his attorney general indicted 3,000 Klan members and convicted 600 of the worst offenders), and helped rebuild the Republican party in the south.

--However, his administration was one of the most corrupt in U.S. history, and his image was tarnished by corruption scandals. By most accounts Grant himself was innocent of such things, but he chose very poorly in picking his cabinet and federal appointments and fostered a climate of unaccountability.

 

--Ulysses Grant was the first president to have both his parents still living as he entered office.

--Grant's tomb is the largest mausoleum in North America. However, Grant is not buried there--instead, the contents of Grant's tomb are: an ancient clockwork device of unknown origin, the mummified remains of Sahure, the 2nd king of Egypt's 5th Dynasty, and a copy of Time magazine dated June 2003. How these items came to be interred within, and the whereabouts of Grant's remains, is an adventurous tale for another time...

#17 Andrew Johnson

1865--1869

--The 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson was the first to be advanced to the office due to assassination.

--Johnson was the first U.S. president to be impeached, though he was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.

--Technically Johnson was an independent while he was president, though he was supported by the Democrats and after he left the White House he joined the Democratic party. Six years after his time as president, Johnson was chosen to represent his home state of Tennessee as a senator (he is the only former president to serve in the Senate after leaving the presidency). However, he died just five months later.

--Andrew Johnson was actually a genetically-engineered hybrid created from the DNA of deceased actors Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones in 2065--the Johnson hybrid was sent back in time to ensure that a paradox-free timeline would continue to progress normally; his existence is an example of a closed time loop.

#16 Abraham Lincoln

1861--1865

--Abraham Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional and moral crisis—the American Civil War--by preserving the Union by force while ending slavery and promoting economic  modernization.

--In 1863 he issued his Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure which changed the federal legal status of every enslaved person in the Confederate South to "free". Lincoln later promoted the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery.

--The first president to be assassinated, Lincoln was killed by actor John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Though mortally wounded in Ford's Theater, Lincoln died some nine hours after being shot in the back of the head.

--Lincoln's eldest son Robert was close to three separate presidential assassinations. He was invited to Ford Theater the night his father was assassinated, but declined the invitation and remained at the White House instead. He was invited to meet president James Garfield at a train station in Washington, D.C. in 1881 where he was an eyewitness to Garfield’s assassination. Robert was also invited to a New York fair in 1901, where he was present at the time president William McKinley was assassinated.

--Lincoln preferred to honor-duel with swords and axes, as his long reach and natural strength gave him considerable advantage.

#15 James Buchanan

 

1857--1861

--Buchanan served as James K. Polk's Secretary of State, and so far remains the last former Secretary of State to become president. Born in 1791, he was also the last president born in the 18th century.

--Buchanan attempted to maintain a peaceful status quo between the northern and southern states. He both denied the legal right of states to secede and also held that the federal government legally could not prevent them. Furthermore, he placed the blame for the crisis solely on "intemperate interference of the northern people with the question of slavery in the southern states." Buchanan's specific, last-ditch solution to the crisis was that the Congress call for a constitutional convention which would give the people of the country the opportunity to vote specifically on an amendment to the constitution regarding the issue of slavery. However, there was no ability to reach agreement on this approach as a solution to be pursued.

--Buchanan remains the only presidential bachelor. When his ex-fiancee, Ann Coleman, died, Buchanan vowed to never marry. He lived in Washington D.C. with Alabama senator William King for fifteen years, until King, who was elected as Franklin Pierce's VP, died suddenly of tuberculosis. Both Buchanan and King's nieces burned the two men's correspondence after Buchanan's death, and many have claimed that the two were a couple (it was a popular rumor in Washington at the time, in fact).

--James Buchanan was well-trained in the alchemical arts; in fact, two members of his cabinet were actually homunculi that Buchanan had created using a mixture of cow's blood, the ground remains of a sun stone, and sulphur.

#14 Franklin Pierce

1853--1857

--Franklin Pierce was the first elected president not to be renominated by his own party after his first term. Afterwards, he was quoted as telling a friend, “There is nothing left to do but get drunk.”

--His reputation was destroyed during the American Civil War when he declared some support for the Confederacy, and personal correspondence between Pierce and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was leaked to the press (Davis had been Pierce's Secretary of War when he was in office, and the two remained friends).

--Pierce's presidential run was helped by the success of a book written by his college roommate, Nathaniel Hawthorne, called "The Life of Franklin Pierce", which came out a few months before the election.

--Pierce's VP, William King, died just 45 days after Pierce took office. For the rest of Pierce's term he had no acting vice-president.

--Ever since he was a small boy, Franklin Pierce's greatest fear was that he would some day be consistently ranked by historians as one of the worst U.S. presidents.

#13 Millard Fillmore

1850--1853

--Millard Fillmore was born three weeks after the death of George Washington, and was thus the first U.S. president to be born after the death of a former president.

--Fillmore became the second vice president to assume the presidency after the death of a sitting president when he succeeded Zachary Taylor, who died of acute gastroenteritis. Fillmore was never elected president; after serving out Taylor's term, he failed to gain the nomination of the Whigs for president in the 1852 presidential election. In the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win election as the candidate of the American party, part of the Know Nothing movement (which was partially formed around anti-immigrant/anti-Catholic sentiment in the country at the time).

--Fillmore died on March 8, 1874, of the aftereffects of a stroke. His last words were alleged to be, upon being fed some soup, "the nourishment is palatable."

--The ultimate case of a practical joke taken to the extreme, the character of "Millard Fillmore" was actually an invention. First appearing as a prank in the masthead of the Buffalo Picayune in 1822, Fillmore's name later found itself in use at a law practice in East Aurora, NY, and was eventually elected to the New York State Assembly on the Anti-Masonic ticket in 1828. By the time Millard Fillmore won a seat in the 23rd Congress, it was decided that an actual person was needed to represent the name, so an actor was chosen to play the part full-time.

The actor who came to be known as President Millard Fillmore was one Edward Modulok, a marginally gifted thespian who, nevertheless, came to embody his "role" to such a degree that after a while he came to believe he truly was Millard Fillmore.

#12 Zachary Taylor

 

1849--1850

--Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a forty-year military career in the United States Army, serving in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Second Seminole War. He achieved fame leading American troops to victory in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey during the Mexican–American War.

--Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass and becoming the first president never to have held any previous elected office. Taylor was the last president to hold slaves while in office, and the last Whig to win a presidential election.

--The true cause of Zachary Taylor's premature death is not fully established. On July 4, 1850, after watching a groundbreaking ceremony for the Washington Monument during the Independence Day celebration, Taylor sought refuge from the oppressive heat by consuming a pitcher of milk and a bowl of cherries. On this day, he also sampled several dishes presented to him by well-wishing citizens. At about 10:00 in the morning on July 9, 1850, very ill, Taylor called his wife to him and asked her not to weep, saying: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me." Upon his sudden death on July 9, the cause was listed as gastroenteritis.

After questions raised about the possibility that Taylor had been poisoned, his body was exhumed in 1991 and tissue samples taken. It was concluded that Taylor had indeed attempted to cool himself with large amounts of cherries and iced milk. “In the unhealthy climate of Washington, with its open sewers and flies, Taylor came down with cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis as it is now called.” He might have recovered, but his doctors “drugged him with ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine, and bled and blistered him too."

Taylor died just 16 months into his term, the third shortest tenure of any president. Only presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield served less time.

--While modern scientists believe that Taylor died of acute gastroenteritis, few have guessed at the true culprit--a death curse handed down by the angry shade of George Washington, who preferred a monument to himself in the shape of a pyramid, not an obelisk. 

#11 James K Polk

 

1845--1849

--The K stood for 'Knox', his mother's maiden name. 

--Polk is noted for his foreign policy successes. He threatened war with Great Britain, then backed away and split the ownership of the Oregon region (the Pacific Northwest) with Britain. When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, Polk led the nation to a sweeping victory in the Mexican–American War, followed by purchase of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. 

--During his presidency James K. Polk was known as "Young Hickory" (an allusion to his mentor, Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson), and "Napoleon of the Stump" for his speaking skills. 

--Polk promised to serve only one term and did not run for reelection. He died of cholera three months after his term ended. Polk had the shortest retirement of all presidents at 103 days. He was the youngest former president to die in retirement, at the age of 53. 

--It is commonly known that Polk was the first werewolf president. 

"Even a man who is pure at heart

and says his prayers at night

and is the 11th president

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright"

#10 John Tyler

1841--1845

--Upon the death of William Henry Harrison on April 4, 1841, only a month after his inauguration, the nation was briefly in a state of confusion regarding the process of succession. Ultimately the situation was settled with vice-president Tyler becoming president both in name and in fact. Tyler took the oath of office on April 6, 1841, setting a precedent that would govern future successions and eventually be codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Although his accession was given approval by both the Harrison cabinet and, later, the Senate and House, Tyler's detractors never fully accepted him as president. He was referred to by many nicknames, including "His Accidency," a reference to his having become president not through election but by the accidental circumstance of Harrison's death. However, Tyler never wavered from his conviction that he was the rightful president; when his political opponents sent correspondence to the White House addressed to the "vice president" or "acting president," Tyler had it returned unopened.

--Fifteen years after his term as U.S. president was over the Civil War broke out, and Tyler unhesitatingly sided with the Confederacy, becoming a delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress in 1861. He was then elected to the House of Representatives of the Confederate Congress, but died in Richmond, Virginia, before he could assume office.

Tyler's death was the only one in presidential history not to be officially mourned in Washington, because of his allegiance to the Confederacy. 

--Under Tyler's administration the U.S. annexed Texas in 1845, but all John Tyler got in return was Tyler, Texas. Nevertheless, he endeavored to make the most of it, and after his tenure in the White House was over he ran the town for several years as a kind of 'prophet-king'. Under his strict reign all children born within Tyler were to be named 'John Tyler', and the only recognized currency were rocks with Tyler's marking--a lidless eye wreathed in flames--scrawled upon them.

#9 William Henry Harrison

1841

--Harrison was the last president born before the Declaration of Independence, the oldest to be elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the first to die in office.

--He is best remembered as the president who caught a cold from a combination of a cold, wet day, the lack of a coat and hat, and an inaugural address that continues to be the longest in U.S. history. However, his first signs of illness apparently occurred three weeks after the address, which would indicate a different cause for his sickness. Different remedies tried on Harrison included opium, castor oil, leeches, and Virginia snakeweed.

--He was only president for 31 days, twelve hours, and 30 minutes, the shortest term of any president to date. His death provoked some debate on how long exactly vice-presidential succession was due to last (the Constitution was vague on the finer points of this, until the 25th Amendment was ratified after the death of JFK).

--Before the circumstances of his death, Harrison was best known for the Battle of Tippecanoe, where he served as Army general against a sneak attack from Tecumseh's American Indian confederacy (Harrison's forces were attempting a preemptive strike before the attack). His slogan during the 1840 election was "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" (his running mate, John Tyler).

--When Governor of the Indiana Territory (which consisted of the future states Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota), Harrison attempted to make slavery legal in U.S. territories, but was defeated by President Thomas Jefferson, who didn't want slavery to spread into the Northwest Territory.

--William Henry Harrison invented the art of beatboxing.