Fascinating Facts You Probably Don't Know About Every United States President

hello I'm Simon Whistler you're watching the today I found our YouTube channel and in the video today we've got a really special one for you as you've probably seen by the time of this one it's a really long video David and I are presenting it together and basically we're taking you through every President of the United States and giving you interesting facts about every single one now if you want to skip to a particular president you can look in the description below and we will have time codes indicating where the facts about each one begins so you can do that if you want to skip ahead or just sit back and enjoy this video so over to David for the first president first president George Washington George Washington was tatha phobic irrationally terrified of being buried alive on his deathbed he told his attendants I'm just going have me decently buried and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead this wasn't quite as irrational in his day as it is now tatha phobia hit its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries in 1896 TM Montgomery who is supervising the dis internment of remains at Fort Randall Cemetery reported that a little over 2 percent of those bodies exhumed were definitely victims of being accidentally buried alive in other words about two percent woke up and tried to claw their way out and were unable to do so given the oxygen supply and a coffin doesn't last that long it was likely that the actual percentage of people buried alive was much higher when you include the ones who didn't wake but we're still technically alive when buried the reason the rate of being buried alive was quite high around this time was primarily due to the high number of people dying of various diseases like cholera smallpox etc these people tend to not get a close investigation to make sure they were really dead rather than just passed out and they also tended to be buried quickly to prevent the spread of whatever disease they were thought to have died from another example in the 17th century William Tabb compiled a list of 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial 149 cases of actual premature burial 10 cases in which bodies were accidentally dissected before death and 2 cases in which embalming was started on the still-living George Washington did not have wooden teeth as is often said his false teeth tended to be made of things like ivory human and animal teeth and feature a rather strong spring mechanism that had to be forcefully held together with his jaw muscles interestingly Washington actually had Prettyman nickolas dental hygiene for his time including brushing his teeth daily and using mouthwash and a tongue scraper however he also suffered from constant tooth aches and frequently took calomel mercurous chloride which can lead to the destruction of teeth he also like many of his day used substances that were very abrasive to clean his mouth which probably also led to the decay of his tooth enamel so by a combination of that and probably having naturally bad teeth this led to him losing his teeth steadily from the age of 22 until 55 when he officially lost them all indeed by his inauguration in 1789 he had only one natural tooth remaining which I like to imagine he called old Chomper Washington also never chopped down a cherry tree that we know of the famous I cannot tell a lie story was itself a lie conjured up by author parson Weems and his so-called biography of George Washington published in 1809 this included many classic English folk tale stories adapted and applied to George Washington's life Washington was also the only president who didn't live in the White House during his two terms as president the capital of the United States was in New York than Philadelphia second president John Adams Adams had the nickname his rotundity this was because after Washington was elected the first president there was debate over what to officially call the president the Senate meetings over this lasted about a month Adams heavily argued for titles for the presidents that were highly pompous sounding such as his high mightiness and his majesty the president eventually the simpler title of president of the United States won out Adams was the first president have a child he would become President John Quincy Adams the sixth President of the United States third President Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson didn't just pan the Declaration of Independence he also rewrote the Bible to his liking Jefferson didn't hold was the supernatural elements of the Bible he thus set about making his own Jeffersonian Translation that basically excluded every part he didn't agree with in his view separating the wheat from the chaff both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4 1826 the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence but note it wasn't actually signed by most until August 2nd not July 4th Adams last words were Thomas Jefferson still survives he didn't know that Jefferson had died a few hours before the two were extremely bitter enemies from much of their political life but in retirement laid aside their differences and became very close friends upon his death Jefferson was about $100,000 in debt which is about two million dollars today partially due to at the time the president having to pay for upkeep of the White House including the cost of official state functions however very shortly before his death the public raised about sixteen thousand five hundred dollars to help pay off some of his debts but when news of his death spread these efforts stopped you'll often hear that Thomas Jefferson's last words were I have done for my country and for all mankind all that I could do and I now resign my soul without fear to my god my daughter to my country however after he said this to his family he then went to sleep but woke up later and said to the doctor is it the fourth yet which was somewhat less eloquent real last words fourth President James Madison James Madison was the shortest president to date standing at just 5 foot 4 inches tall and reportedly weighing in at about a hundred pounds perhaps because of his small stature he was the first president to commonly wear long leg trousers the fashion at the time was knee breeches Madison is known as the father of the Constitution and also was a key figure in the development and establishments of the Bill of Rights fifth President James Monroe Monroe was elected for a second term in 1820 on a near unanimous vote having just one electoral college vote go against him this is today widely claimed to have been because said voter William Plumer supposedly felt no president except Washington should have the honor of unanimous vote however this idea has no primary source and was only first proposed about a half-century after this election the bigger nail in the coffin is his off repeated notion is that Plumer himself explicitly gave his reason for not voting for Monroe because he thought Monroe had behaved improperly in his first term instead Plumer voted for a different Democratic Republican John Quincy Adams bloomer also refused to vote for Monroe's vice president Daniel Tompkins because bloomer thought he had previously grossly neglected his duty six presidents John Quincy Adams his Mizzell main is pronounced Quincy not Quincy as pretty much every single person alive today pronounces it unlike every other president except Andrew Jackson after serving as president Adams served in Congress winning a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1830 which he held for seven ten years until his death Adams was a longtime opponent of slavery delighting in being obnoxious to the slave faction in his own words among many other anti-slavery cases and arguments he was involved in he took the stand in the famed Amistad case and argued for four hours on behalf of the Africans the slaves were later freed in another instance southern congressmen instituted a gag rule banning the discussion of slavery on the floor Adams ignored the rule and did it anyways thanks to his political clout he was able to get away with it where others would not have his fifty volumes of his personal journal he kept from 1779 to 1848 are some of the most detailed first-hand accounts of the formation of the United States from birth to his death when he died on February the 23rd 1848 his last words were reportedly this is the last of earth I am content 7th President Andrew Jackson before becoming president Jackson killed a man for publicly calling him a worthless scoundrel a poltroon and a coward the man Charles Dickinson also insulted Jackson's wife calling her a bigamist in fact she was a bigamist as she'd married Jackson while still technically married to her former husband this scuffle between Dickinson and Jackson was all resulting from a dispute over a horse-racing bet Jackson was the first president to be attacked while in office Robert B Randolph punched him and then ran away Jackson was also the first president who someone tried to kill when a slightly insane man Richard Lawrence fired two guns at him both of which misfired but were miraculously later found to work perfectly Jackson then beat the man with his cane including continuing to do so after Lawrence had been subdued with those around having to pull Jackson away from Lawrence to stop the beating eight presidents Martin Van Buren the first US president that was born in the United States he was also the first president not of Irish or British ancestry his ancestors were Dutch 9th President William Henry Harrison Harrison gave the longest inauguration speech in history comprising eight thousand five hundred and seventy eight words and lasting about two hours during a cold and wet day he wore no coat or hat during his speech which actually had been edited down by a friend of Harrison's Daniel Webster Harrison died a month later from pneumonia giving him the record as the shortest stint as president to date it should be noted though that while it's often implied and somehow explicitly stated that he died as a result of that lengthy speech in the cold this is not the case he did not get sick until three weeks after his speech his doctors didn't help though regularly bleeding him with leeches among other treatments his last words assumed to have been for Vice President John Tyler though told the Harrisons doctor as Tyler wasn't there were sir I wish you to understand the true principles of the government I wish them carried out I ask nothing more tenth president John Tyler thanks to Harrison's death Tyler was not only the tenth vice president but also the tenth President of the United States several times leading up to the presidency Tyler attempted to bow out of politics and go back to practicing law and taking care of his family he continued to find himself thrust back into the spotlight though eventually being tacked on to Harrison's presidential ticket upon Harrison's election Tyler moved back to his home in Williamsburg expecting that his vice president I'd not have much of anything to do so could simply stay home and execute his plan of bowing out of politics obviously Harrison's death watered his attempt at the quiet life later in his life Tyler was elected to the Congress of the Confederate States of America and was a supporter of the succession of the southern states 11th President James K Polk as a child Polk had a period in 1812 where his health went downhill it was discovered that he had bladder stones that were too big to pass without any anesthetic other than brandy and while being conscious throughout the whole thing dr. Ephraim McDowell operated on Polk cutting him open and manually removing the stones from his bladder despite the surgeries apart from being amazingly painful at the time were also extremely high-risk he survived the ordeal just fine though some have speculated it may have played a part in his apparent inability to have children Polk died just three months after leaving office having apparently overworked himself he lost a lot of weight while in office and his health gradually declined supposedly from lack of rest he also possibly contracted cholera and his farewell tour his last words were to his wife who had helped him compose his speeches and who he nearly always ran his political decisions by to get her opinion on things I love you Sarah for all eternity I love you 12 presidents Zachary Taylor because there were no school houses where he lived in Kentucky Taylor had very little formal education while he was considered to quick learner by one schoolmaster he eventually had he was noted for his near unintelligible handwriting spelling and grammar which resembled that of a near illiterate while he may not have been book smart he was a brilliant military leader rapidly rising through the ranks and winning many a battle including several where his forces were drastically outnumbered in one battle against Santana himself leading 20,000 Mexican soldiers Taylor commanded just six thousand at the time and only a few hundred were Regular Army soldiers the rest were volunteers who hadn't yet fort having sent most of his forces away to join General Winfield Scott at the orders of President Polk it has been theorized by some that this was done to stop Taylor's popularity from growing even further by depriving him of most of his troops it would stop him from being able to engage any forces rather than just sit back Taylor instead took his drastically diminished forces deeper into enemy territory Santana saw an opportunity to wipe out one of the USA's army so raised an army and marched towards Taylor Taylor's 6,000 mostly new recruits lost just 600 during the fight compared to 1800 lost for Santana Santana was in the end forced to retreat if it was Paul's plan to quell Taylor's rising fame by having him get rid of most of his army it backfired this was hailed as one of the greatest military victories in US military history and garnered Taylor comparisons with George Washington and Andrew Jackson because of his many brilliant victories against overwhelming odds there started to be a push for him to run for president Taylor responded to this such an idea never entered my head nor is it likely to enter the head of any same person quite Taylor died mysteriously while in office after having contracted bilious diarrhea Rohr bilious cholera which was exasperated by the fact that his doctors had bled him and treated him with various things that were likely to have aided in killing him in order to test whether he was actually poisoned in 1991 his remains were exhumed and studied no evidence of poisoning was found and it was determined that he probably died of Cholera morbus or acute gastroenteritis thirteenth president Millard Fillmore Fillmore was the first president to have running water in the White House while touring Europe later in life University of Oxford offered him an honorary Doctor of civil law degree which he refused stating that he had not achieved the necessary literary nor scientific attainment for such a degree and lacked the benefit of a classical education he further went on to state that he could not read the Latin the Diploma was written in and no man should accept a degree he cannot read Fillmore was vice president when Zachary Taylor died suddenly upon his taking over the presidency his entire cabinet resigned Fillmore had very different political ideologies than Taylor many of which made him a controversial new head of the Whig party it wasn't long after Fillmore's presidency that the Whig party broke up with many Whigs joining the new Republican Party Fillmore was not one of them instead joining the know-nothing party and running for president under that ticket in 1856 but only garnering 21.6 percent of the popular vote and eight electoral votes Fillmore died on March 8 1874 shortly after having a stroke his last words were supposedly the nourishment is palatable referring to his soup someone was feeding him after his stroke 14th President Franklin Pierce just a few months before taking the office of the presidency Pierce and his wife had to watch their third born child Benjamin the only one to live past four years old crushed in a train accident after the Train they were on derailed and rolled downhill in Andover Massachusetts the boy was 11 years old Pierce's wife blamed Pierce for the accident believing it was God punishing him for taking such a high office their relationship deteriorated from there and this event is speculated to have contributed to Pierce's alcohol problem he later died of cirrhosis of the liver at the time of his inauguration Pierce was the youngest president to ever hold the office just 48 beating out the previous record of 49 held by Polk this was the first president to choose to affirm his oath of office rather than swear it he was also the first to square up on a book of law rather than the Bible on top of that his inaugural address was unique and that he was the first president to do his entire speech from memory the primary slogan for Pierce's campaign for the presidency was we poked you in 1844 we shall pierce you in 1852 yep 15th President James Buchanan often listed as the worst president in US history Buchanan was eventually disliked even by his own party for his unwilling to take a stand on anything having a knack for creating compromises that both major parties disliked this was more significant than it would have otherwise been because of the eminent threat of the South seceding from the United States as an example of his fiddling while Rome burns tendencies he felt that seceding from the Union was against the law but that it was also against the law to go to war to stop the secession as he often stated I acknowledge no master but the law there just wasn't much he felt he could do other than propose various compromises to solve the issue because he never married the only president to be a lifelong bachelor and lived with William Rufus King vice president under Franklin Pierce for 15 years before King died shortly after Pierce became president this caused many in his day and now to think he was perhaps gay it also caused Andrew Jackson to King the nickname Miss Nancy King was also sometimes referred to as Buchanan's wife by political opponents however for whatever it's worth Buchanan was engaged once but his fiancee and Caroline Coleman died very shortly before her death possibly from an overdose of laudanum Coleman broke off the engagement believing Buchanan to be uninterested in her thanks to tabloid insinuation that he was only marrying her for her wealthy family and he was having liaisons with other women but after learning of Coleman's death Buchanan wrote to her father and stated I must sustain the shock of her death but I feel that happiness has fled from me forever he was later intimately connected with Mary Kay Snider even going so far as stating he thought they'd get married but it never came about as to his living with King he explained in a letter that has survived that he felt no person should live alone and times when King was absent for extended periods he often sought other housemates to fill the void in his home 16th President Abraham Lincoln while Lincoln is rightly almost universally considered to be the greatest of all the u.s. presidents he also has his share of blemishes which are probably more likely not to have heard of so those the things we'll cover here rather than the many great things he did which you probably already know about for instance Lincoln's wife is known to have accepted money in exchange for Lincoln appointing certain people to various positions Lincoln often lamented his wife doing this but was apparently powerless to stop her more to the point he went ahead and gave out the positions as she requested more scandalous than this and very controversial in his day was that Lincoln suspended corpus it was then decreed that anyone engaged by act speech or writing in discouraging volunteer enlistments or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy or in any other disloyal practice against the United States could be arrested and tried by a military tribunal this was extremely controversial particularly from their last bit any other disloyal practice against the United States with this if you simply criticize the president's or the US you could be arrested for instance one man was arrested by Union General Henry Halleck for stating I wouldn't wipe my ass with the Stars and Stripes that it otherwise committed no crime in total an estimated 15,000 civilian US citizens were arrested and held some were eventually given trials but not in front of a civil court they were tried in front of a military tribunal these arrests drastically dropped after it was determined a month after Lincoln made his decree that the police and military were arresting far too many people who posed no threat and had committed no crime however the agents were simply told to use more discretion when making arrests Lincoln did not undo his suspension of habeas corpus and the unjust arrests continued albeit at a slower pace Lincoln did however stipulate that no one could be put to death for treason without his say-so many would have been executed for treason without cause had it not been for him pardoning them most however often given time in prison or sentenced to hard labor often for committing no actual crime yet another little-known Lincoln fact is that he once was the co-owner of a saloon called Barre in Lincoln if you believe an account of two of his close friends Joshua S speed and William Herndon the latter of which was his law partner Lincoln also occasionally visited prostitutes before he was married and also for a time thoughted contracted syphilis from doing this visiting prostitutes wasn't that uncommon for men of the day but nevertheless against the grain of the perfect man imaged touted after his death however even during his liaisons again if you believe his friends account he apparently was as honest and as upstanding as ever during one instance he supposedly only had $3.00 about 87 dollars today but the woman charged five dollars about and $44 today she said should trust him to pay the balance when he could but he wasn't so sure of his ability to do so and didn't want to shortchange her if he was later unable so got back dressed much to the amused surprise of the woman another little-known Lincoln fact is that he established the Secret Service on the day he was assassinated though this wouldn't have changed anything for him had it been done earlier as the Secret Service at the time was tasked with routing out counterfeit money which was a huge problem at the time in the United States 17th President Andrew Johnson Johnson was the first u.s. president to be impeached he ended up very narrowly being acquitted though by just one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to remove him unlike many presidents were born to wealthy families are married into them Johnson was born very poor after his father died trying to rescue three people from drowning before getting into politics he was a tailor he was also mostly self educated outside of learning to become a tailor including teaching himself how to read and write he later had his reading and writing skills improved as well as learned mathematics from his sixteen-year-old wife who was the daughter of a shoemaker he met her after running away from his tailor apprenticeship in establishing his own shop 18th presidents Eunice's s grants grants real name was actually Hiram Ulysses Grant but he was mistakenly entered into West Point as Eunice's s grant from Ohio by the person who nominated him congressman Thomas L Hammett grants likes the name though as it gave him the initials u.s. which ultimately garnered him the nickname Sam after Uncle Sam grant is the first president known to have died of cancer he died of throat cancer having smoked an estimated 20 cigars per day throughout much of his adult life he was even sent over 10,000 cigars during his later military career by well-wishers who knew he liked cigars unlike most grant attempted to run for a third term as president but failed to be nominated after his presidency thanks to some bad business dealings grant found himself deeply in debt but managed to pull out of this and with the help of Mark Twain and some clever marketing Twain thought up Grant's Widow and nearly half a million dollars about 10 million dollars today in royalties from grants memoirs which he finished only a few days before his death grants last words were reportedly I hope that nobody will be distressed on my accounts 19th president Wrather behave haze won the presidency via the compromise of 1877 he had not actually won the popular vote and possibly didn't even win the electoral college there were twenty disputed votes thanks to voter fraud and closed voting numbers with the tally before the disputed votes at 184 to Tilden and 165 to Hayes Hayes needed all twenty disputed votes to win the presidency Tilden needed just one despite this as opposed to the Independent Commission ordered all twenty electoral votes to Hayes giving him the presidency naturally this didn't sit well with the Democrats but a compromise was eventually worked out where Hayes would get the presidency if Hayes would agree to end the military's occupation of certain states in the south which love Democrats to take back control of those states Hayes died from complications due to a heart attack his last words were reportedly I know that I'm going where Lucy is his wife Lucy had already died xx President James Garfield due to being extremely poor thanks to his father's untimely death when James was just seventeen months old Garfield worked a variety of odd jobs to help support himself during his education including working as a janitor a carpenter and a bell ringer shortly after graduating from seminary he took a position as a teacher and later sought higher education attending Williams College he then worked as a preacher a principal of a high school and a teacher of classical languages before getting into law and been into politics Garfield was also extremely poor during his short presidency thanks to the fact that the president was still expected to pay White House operating expenses out of his own salary including funding expensive state dinners and the like as previously mentioned as most presidents were independently wealthy this was not usually a problem Garfield was not in any way wealthy and even had to borrow a horse and buggy from former president Hayes to get around Garfield was the second president to be assassinated though he did live for 80 days after being shot he developed a severe infection from the gunshots with a contributing factor possibly being several doctors who stuck their unsterilized fingers into one of the bullet holes to try to find the bullet launched deep in Garfield's body his health gradually deteriorated until he finally suffered a heart attack and an aneurysm Garfield was nearly assassinated earlier but the wood assassin Charles J Gatto supposedly lost his nerve at first after seeing the president's grief over his extremely ill wife and supposedly worrying Garfield's death would worsen her health after Garfield's wife recovered somewhat ghetto followed through with his plan and shot the president Garfield's last words were reportedly my work is done 21st president Chester Arthur known for his amazing fashion sense Arthur owned about 80 pairs of pants which he often like to change several times a day depending on where he'd be and what he'd be doing at a particular time 22nd President Grover Cleveland Cleveland is the only president to be married while in the White House the second to be married while presidents before his marriage to 21 year old Frances fulsome Cleveland the youngest first lady in history his sister rose Cleveland performed the duties normally given to the president's wife before becoming president Cleveland once worked as a sheriff in Erie County among his other duties he twice functioned as a hangman during his time as president Cleveland secretly had a tumor in his mouth removed to avoid panic he did it while supposedly on vacation aboard a cruise ship with the doctors removing parts of his hard palate and upper left jaw thanks to a rubber prosthesis he was able to continue to speak more or less normally and the slight alteration in his speech and appearance was covered up by a story that it had two teeth removed 23rd president Benjamin Harrison Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of former President William Henry Harrison he's the first president whose voice has been preserved thanks to a 36 second recording preserved on a wax phonograph cylinder in 1889 he's also the first president to have electricity in the White House Harrison's wife supposedly was afraid of electricity and refused to touch the light switches 24th presidents Grover Cleveland's yep on here twice he's the only president who have successfully been elected non-consecutive terms as such he's considered to have been the 22nd and 24th president even though technically it could be argued that he should only be counted once when saying there have been 44 presidents thus if we're being technical that statement should be there have only been 43 presidents even though most saith the other way 25th president William McKinley McKinley worked jobs as postal clerk and as a teacher before the Civil War he joined the Army is a private and rose to the rank of major by war's end he then decided to study law and got into politics thanks to his close friend from the Army future president Rutherford B Hayes his first political job was giving speeches on behalf of Hayes McKinley and his wife were extremely close and after she became epileptic they rarely were ever seen apart the two had two daughters one died as a baby the other when she was just a few years old of typhoid fever after McKinley had been shot twice his immediate action was to save the life of the assassin who a mob had gathered around he then asked for them to break the news gently to his wife he seemed to get better after the surgery but infection set in and he died ten days after being shot his last words were to his wife who said she wanted to die with him he replied we're all going we're all going God's will be done not ours on the way to his funeral his wife was huddled in a compartment of the funeral train praying that the Lord would take her with her dearest love after the funeral she set up a shrine in her home and regularly visited McKinley's burial vault it was thought she wouldn't last long after his death but lived another six years before dying at 59 26th President Theodore Roosevelt Roosevelt was shot by a saloon keeper John Schrank on October the 14th 1912 his life was saved thanks to a steel eyeglass case and his 50-page speech he was carrying in his jacket both of which the bullet had to pass through his decision to go ahead with his speech rather than seek medical aid immediately was from concluding that because he was not coughing up a blood the bullet must not have penetrated that deeply into his chest his opening line for the speech was 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 x-rays later showed that the bullet had lodged three inches into his chest and was embedded in his or chest muscle Roosevelt's wife Alice died of undiagnosed kidney failure shortly after giving birth to their daughter Alice and on the same day and in the same house that his mother died of typhoid fever eleven hours earlier he simply put a giant X in his journal that day and wrote one sentence under it the light has gone out of my life 27th President William Howard Taft known for his obesity flatulence and frequent belching it's often stated the TAF once got stuck in a White House bathtub as he was too fat to squeeze out in order to get himself out he had butter brought to him which was smeared all over after he got out he ordered a larger bathtub however it isn't actually clear any part of this story is true lacking any primary sources despite it being widely repeated today even by otherwise reputable sources Taft is noted as being the only President to also become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court which was really his life's ambition according to his wife never did he ceased to regard the Supreme Court appointment is more desirable than the presidency Taft was one of the presidents who was a member of the Yale Skull and Bones Society which TAFEs father had helped found 28th President Woodrow Wilson Woodrow Wilson holds the record as the president who played the most rounds of golf while in office Wilson played over a thousand rounds of this sport while in office so about one round every other day he didn't play golf much before becoming president but because he couldn't cycle anymore as was his former hobby he took up golf instead as a means of exercise Wilson was also the first sitting president to attend a World Series in the first to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a World Series he was a centerfielder in college Wilson's second wife was a direct descendant of Pocahontas 29th President warren g harding known for a bit of a gambling problem Harding once lost a set of white house china in a bet he also had affairs with at least four women including one who claimed her daughter was also Harding's daughter and that she had sex with him in the White House closet his presidency was noted for its numerous scandals and corruption of his cabinet before politics Harding was a successful newspaper publisher he also is generally credited with coining the term founding fathers in 1916 30th President Calvin Coolidge after Calvin Coolidge died and upon hearing the news that he was no longer alive Dorothy Parker famously quipped how can they tell Coolidge was known for his shy quiet and calm demeanor offset by his wife's boisterous friendly and outgoing personality Coolidge met his first wife Grace Anna Goodhue when he was shaving with nothing but underwear and a hat on she saw him through a window as she was watering some flowers as to why he was wearing her hat he later told her he generally wore a hat while shaving to keep his hair out of his face Coolidge soon proposed grace against the objections of her mother by stating I am going to marry you rather than asking her after getting married Coolidge gave his wife 52 pairs of socks that had holes in them for her to fix she later stated in a biography written after her husband's death when I inquired if their wearer had married me just to get his stockings donned he replied quite seriously no but I find it mighty handy Coolidge later said of his wife we thought we were made for each other for almost a quarter of a century she has born with my infirmities and I have rejoiced in her Grace's 31st President Herbert Hoover as a child Hoover was once pronounced dead but was revived by dr. John Minthorn who was Hoover's uncle and Hoover lived with as both of his parents had died when he was quite young before his father died he often called Herbert my little stick-in-the-mud while President Hoover and his wife frequently spoke together in mandarin in order to have private conversations despite their almost always being others around before Jimmy Carter surpassed him on September 7 2012 Hoover held the record for the longest retirement period after being president at 31 years 7 months 16 days 30 seconds President Franklin D Roosevelt the fifth cousin of Teddy Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt also married Teddy's niece Eleanor Roosevelt however their marriage was not a happy one Eleanor stated she thought sex was an ordeal to be endured whether because of this or just his own proclivities he had several Affairs including a long-standing one with Eleanor Roosevelt secretary Lucy Mercer when Eleanor found out she offered Roosevelt a divorce so that he could marry Lucy however as Lucy was Catholic she didn't feel she could marry a divorced man although apparently having sex with a married man was totally fine Franklin and Eleanor decided to stay together and Franklin promised not to see Lucy any more a promise he promptly broke and continued to read correspond with her and later continued the affair while this wasn't widely known at the time of course the Secret Service knew all about it and had codenamed Lucy mrs. Johnson this wasn't the only long-standing affair Roosevelt had his son Elliott claimed that his father also had a 20-year long affair with his secretary margarita lehand which overlapped with his affair with Lucy Eleanor said of the affairs I have the memory of an elephant I can forgive but I cannot forget the two lived apart for the latter part of their marriage as Roosevelt's health declined in his later years he asked Eleanor to come live with him again she refused Roosevelt died while sitting for a painting with his last words being I have a terrific pain in the back of my head he had a cerebral hemorrhage 33rd president harry s truman the s in Truman's middle name doesn't stand for anything his parents picked it to honor both of his grandfather's Andrew shipped Truman and Solomon young Truman worked a variety of odd jobs as a young man including a timekeeper for the Santa Fe Railroad during this time he would sleep in the hobo camps because of his poverty his proposal to Bess Wallace was rejected which was a turning point in his life motivating him to make more money Truman attempted to go to college and then law school but dropped out of bowls quite quickly he also attempted to go to West Point but was rejected because of his bad vision he then attempted to join the National Guard which he managed to get into only after memorizing the eye chart so that the testers wouldn't know about his vision problems after becoming president via Franklin Roosevelt's death Truman spoke with Eleanor Roosevelt and asked if there was anything he could do for her Eleanor not apparently overly fond of her husband due to numerous Affairs replied is there anything we can do for you you are the one that's in trouble now Truman's inauguration for his second term as president was the first ever to be televised nationally during Truman's time as president he ordered an addition to the White House to accommodate his family when the people hired started examining things for what they need to do for the edition they found 130 year old white house was completely dilapidated including a collapse floor in the president's bedroom and they closed his bathroom is being completely unsafe to use once the addition was done Truman was told that it was the only part of the White House that could be trusted it's structurally sound as such he ordered a complete renovation of the White House which took three years after his presidency Truman returned to his home Missouri with his only income his old army pension which was no more than a hundred and twelve dollars and 56 cents per month or about nine hundred and eighty two dollars today largely his response to a somewhat impoverished situation Congress later passed the former presidents Act to give US presidents pensions Truman numerous offers from large corporations for work but turned them all down stating I knew they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman the person but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States I could never lend myself to any transaction however respectable that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the presidency 34th President Dwight d Eisenhower as a child Eisenhower was supposed to be watching his little brother but didn't his brother then had an accident that resulted in him going blind in one eye every child in Eisenhower's family was nicknamed Ike though even Dwight himself later stated he didn't know why this alike was Dwight's nickname after he rose to the position of five-star general he was the only one in his family that was still referred to as Ike Eisenhower's later life all hinged on a potentially life-threatening decision he made as a freshman in school it hurt his knee which led to an infection the doctor told him that he would die if he didn't allow the leg to be amputated Eisenhower refused the surgery that did not die obviously had he taken the doctors advice he would have never had a military career nor would he have become president while at West Point Eisenhower once tackles legendary athlete Jim Thorpe during a football game in 1912 Eisenhower was also a cheerleader for the junior varsity team this wasn't because of a lack of women at West Point but because in the early days cheerleaders were always men Eisenhower risk at expulsion from West Point by playing sports why he briefly played semi-pro baseball previous to his time at West Point in order for one to participate in college athletics one must be an amateur athlete Bassem someone who has never made money playing sports playing semi-professional baseball no matter if it was for love of the game or financial reasons should have disqualified Eisenhower from making the football team yes he told no one of his semi-pro past again so what it just get kicked off the team if they found out right well not quite the cadets honor code states a cadet will not lie cheat steal or tolerate those who do while the codes didn't get formally written until 1922 with the impetus from then Superintendent of the Academy Douglas MacArthur it was still very much applied and honored today cadets have to sign such a pledge it is not known if in 1911 West Point required an actual signature as well either way then officer's word was his bond and deliberate violation of this was a serious offence in the eyes of the school if Dwight d Eisenhower had been discovered to have lied about his lack of amateur status he would not only have been kicked off the team but have been kicked out of the Academy history would have never had the great General Dwight D Eisenhower nor presidents Dwight D Eisenhower who is generally considered to be one of the top 10 US presidents to date Eisenhower said of his life's Gretz not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life maybe the greatest that's either a testament to a life very well led or a testament to how much he loved baseball 35th President John F Kennedy Kennedy was the first u.s. president born in the 20th century while President JFK once had a proposal put on his desk that had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the government commit acts of terrorism on US soil and then frame Cuba for it so that the US could go to war with Cuba President Kennedy wasn't too pleased with it and rejected it wholly and further told general lemon sir the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the US would not be going to war with Cuba something military in the CIA had been strongly pushing for since Castro had taken over there in 1959 general Lebanon sir was shortly thereafter let go as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff's when his term expired john f kennedy's famous ich bin ein berliner comment was not interpreted as I am a jelly filled donut as you'll often read and occasionally hear his statement was a hundred percent correct and it's wording in terms of what he meant to say you can learn more on how this jelly filled donut miss got started in our video here 36th president lyndon b johnson johnson served as a representative a senator and a vice president and finally president making him just one of four people to serve in each of the four elected federal offices before getting into politics he was a high school teacher in Piersol Texas Johnson likes to name things after his initials LBJ such as his daughters Luci Baines and Linda bird and his dog little beagle Johnson 37th President Richard M Nixon the White House was almost destroyed during Nixon's administration this happened thanks to Samuel Byck who has been on assassinating Nixon he successfully managed to take over a Delta Airlines plane but didn't manage to get it off the ground as he'd shot a security guard before getting on the plane alerting the authorities to the trouble his plan had been to have the pilots take off get reasonably close to the White House then he'd killed them and crashed the plane into the White House hopefully killing the president in the process Bick sent one of his letters explaining what he was about to do and why two famed reporter Jack Anderson who himself had been a target for assassination this time by someone in the Nixon administration two members of Nixon's administration J gordon Liddy and E Howard hunt admitted under oath that they had been ordered by a senior White House aide to kill Anderson once ordered to do so they set about trying to find a way to either poison him or murder him vo mugging to make it look like a random event they even met with a CIA operative to discuss the best way to go about killing him luckily for Anderson both conspirators were arrested just a few weeks later being part of the Watergate scandal Libby later stated that Nixon had issued the following statement we need to get rid of that Anderson guy which set in motion the plot to kill Anderson however Nixon wasn't apparently involved in directly ordering the killing nor supposedly knew anything about it he just simply stated Anderson needed to be gotten rid of and his people figured the best way to get rid of Anderson was to kill him Nixon apparently had been upset with Anderson since 1960 when Anderson revealed on the night before the presidential election that Howard Hughes had given a substantial loan to Nixon's brother Anderson also uncovered the fact that the Nixon administration was systematically harassing John Lennon during their attempt to get him deported Anderson was notoriously good at uncovering government scandals and digging up dirt on politicians after his death the FBI tried to seize his files on the grounds that the information could hurt US government interests Richard Nixon once said if I had my life to live over again I'd like to have ended up a sports writer 38th President Gerald Ford Gerald Ford was actually born Lesley Lynch King jr. he changed his name later in life to be named after his stepfather Gerald Ford Ford's mother had left his biological father shortly after Gerald was born this was after Ford's father threatened to kill her with a butcher's knife he had previously also been abusive with the first time he ever hit her on their honeymoon when she looked at another man not surprisingly for didn't want to be the junior of a man like that so once he was an adult he changed his name to match his stepfathers name Ford was the first person ever to become vice president and president without being elected via the electoral college inheriting the presidency after Nixon's resignation and becoming vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned the position while his time as president is the shortest of any president who didn't die in office Ford currently holds the record for the longest lived president at 93 years and a hundred and sixty-five days dying in 2006 however George HW Bush may soon surpass him if he lives to December of 2017 39th President James Carter Jimmy Carter was the first president ever born in a hospital before politics Carter was a peanut farmer his family had been quite wealthy but upon his father's death his father had canceled many of the debts owed to him and had widely distributed his remaining wealth leaving Carter with little Carter even for a while lived on public housing because of it making him the only present to ever live in subsidized housing for the poor once he took over management of the family peanut farm though it blossomed and by 1970 he was relatively wealthy during a partial meltdown of the nrx reactor and Candida's choc river laboratory Carter led a team of US soldiers to help shut down the reactor by disassembling it which Carter and his team did with each person including Carter one at a time lowered into the reactor for a short period before being replaced by the next person Carter is the only president to receive a Nobel Prize after leaving office being awarded one a Peace Prize in 2002 presidents who have received such a prize while in office are Teddy Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama 40th President Ronald Reagan Reagan's first job was as a lifeguard where he reportedly took part in 77 rescues before getting into acting and then politics Reagan was a sports announcer first starting our broadcasting hockey football games in Iowa for $10 a game about a hundred and sixty dollars today he later got a job as a Chicago Cubs announcer before eventually landing a seven-year contract act with Warner Brothers as an actor after a screen test in 1937 he later worked for General Electric Theater and reportedly gave an average of 14 speeches a day while with them Reagan is the only president who had a marriage that ended in divorce - forcing his first wife Jane Wyman supposedly separated over Reagan's political ambitions he later married actress Nancy Reagan who he often called mummy 41st President George HW Bush while at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts Bush was the captain of the varsity baseball team and the captain of the varsity soccer team later at Yale he was the captain of the Yale baseball team playing first pace he also played in the first two College World Series and met Babe Ruth during his senior year besides playing in sports Bush was also a cheerleader at Yale Bush managed to graduate college in two and a half rather than the customary four years directly before attending Yale Bush joined the military to fight in World War two becoming the youngest naval aviator in US history at the age of 18 during one mission Bush was to attack a Japanese installation but his plane was hit and caught fire despite this he went ahead and completed his mission anyway dropping bombs on the target before flying out to sea and ejecting Bush parachuted down over the water and sat in a RAF until rescued by the USS finback submarine his partner in the plane wasn't so lucky as his parachute hadn't opened Bush is only the third present after Eisenhower and Reagan to ever receive an honorary knighthood which he was granted in 1993 by queen elizabeth ii 42nd president William J Clinton William Clinton was actually born William Jefferson Bligh the third his father was a traveling salesman who died in a car crash shortly before bill was born bill adopted the last name of his stepfather Roger Clinton senior when he was 15 years old however while this was apparently done in homage to his stepfather Bill Clinton has stated that Roger Clinton was an alcoholic and obsessive gambler and was abusive to his mother himself and his half-brother while working at a campaign office in Texas Clinton once worked with future filmmaker Steven Spielberg Osama bin Laden supposedly attempted to have Clinton assassinated having his agents plans of bomb under a bridge which Clinton's motorcade would be driving over before driving over the bridge the plot was discovered and the motorcade diverted that said while President Clinton's route was changed and later a bomb the tribute had been Dhin was reportedly found under the bridge reporting of the events at the time downplayed the direct threat to the president noting that the bombs were found several days before the conference was to begin and there are conflicting reports on whether they were placed on the bridge or at an airport and a military base the assassination version of the story first revealed in Ken Gormley's book the death of American virtue Clinton versus Starr relies on information allegedly provided by a former director of The Secret Service Louis miletti although I can find no record of the Treasury officials confirming the report news organizations like the Los Angeles Times accept its validity for whatever that's worth 43rd president george w bush during high school at the Phillips Academy Bush was the head cheerleader during his senior year at Yale he was also a cheerleader he met his wife Laura Welch at a barbecue Bush proposed to her just three months later he often credits Laura for smoothing out his rough edges referring to his earlier alcohol and drug problems 44th President Barack Obama Obama was not just the first black president of the United States but also the first black president of the Harvard Law Review he also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 12 years during which he served eight years as a senator Obama's father Barack Hussein Obama senior from Kenya graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Hawaii and later a master's in economics from Harvard before returning to Kenya his mother later marries an Indonesian man he has a half-sister from his Indonesian stepfather and mother and seven half siblings from his Kenyan father he also has Irish cousins Obama said of his relatives it's like a little mini United Nations I've got relatives who looked like Bernie Mac and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher Obama also claimed in his book Dreams from My Father that his mother's family is distantly related to the former president of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis when Obama first asked his future wife Michelle Robinson out on a date she turned him down the two later started dating and were married a little over three years after they first met in 1989 at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin where Michelle initially served as Obama's advisor at the law firm well that sure was a long one I really hope you enjoyed all the facts that we had here in this video if you did like it please do hit that button below it took us a lot of time and effort to put it together so we'd really appreciate it if you did that and leave us a comment to let us know what you think it's definitely the longest video we've ever made if you'd like to see specials like this again and you got any ideas for us so there's no in the comments we can't promise anything this was a bit experimental but let us know what you think use the comments and if you did like it check out some other videos over there on the right and thanks for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

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Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, election 2016, united states president, president, donald trump, hillary clinton, president facts, united states history, political history, politics, education, edutainment

Id: rAfp-KkqWeg

Length: 49min 5sec (2945 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2016