One Weird Fact About All 45 US Presidents - Historian Reaction

welcome back everybody it's my first reaction video in several days because i just got back from my trip down to fredericksburg virginia where i recorded some videos for the channel hopefully you guys are enjoying those if you haven't seen them just head over to the the channel just click on the link on my username down there below the channel and it'll take you to the main page and you'll see the series of videos i'm doing on the fredericksburg battlefield i also recorded some video retracing the steps of jackson's flank attack at chancellorsville that'll be going live on the channel at the conclusion of the fredericksburg series if you're new to the channel with my reactions i'm not here just to say wow and that's amazing and things like that with reactions i'm i'm here to try to add a little historical context try to fill in the gaps in the history try to explain and expand on a little bit of things this video i want to look at today is called one weird fact about all 45 presidents some of these may be things i don't know because i i haven't actually watched through this yet but i'll put a link in the description to the original content creator which i think he's done a really good job i watched the first couple of minutes of it just to kind of get the context of what it was about but haven't watched through the whole thing so let's go ahead and dive into this and as always don't forget to head over give them a like and a comment and subscribe to the original content creator and please do the same for this channel as well thank you guys for pushing us over 30 000 subscribers today i'm grateful for all your support let's dive in he had been the father of our country but he never fathered any biological children john adams all right so he's flying through these pretty fast that's true no biological children for george washington he did have stepchildren his wife martha was previously married and he had two stepchildren uh and and his stepson's son and his name was george washington park custis he was a step grandson was legally adopted by george washington and george washington park custis as the one who had the the custis lee mansion as it's known now which over overlooks washington dc from arlington national cemetery custis's daughter anna was married to robert e lee so robert e lee was george washington's uh adopted grandson-in-law this was the defense attorney for the eight british soldiers responsible for killing five american colonists in the boston massacre that's true he was the defense attorney uh got most of them off with an acquittal two of them were found guilty of manslaughter but they were let off on pretty insignificant punishments for that but that tells you a lot about the type of man john adams was even though he was an ardent patriot he still believed in the rule of law and he still believed in making sure these men got a fair trial and i think that they did the right thing in finding them not guilty even though the patriot propaganda really spun this as the boston massacre uh honestly i think they were provoked and and really should not have been held responsible for what happened it's fairly well known at this point that thomas jefferson had an affair with his slave sally hemings but the lesser known fact is her relation to his wife martha wales martha's father was john wales who had an affair with sally hemmings's mother leading many historians to believe that jefferson's wife and mistress were half-sisters and that's not really something the many historic many historians believe i think that's a pretty well settled fact now that jefferson's wife and sally hemmings were half sisters and they actually physically were very similar and i think dna is pretty well proved now that sally hemming's the multiple children that she had were in fact uh jefferson's children he may have been the smallest president we've ever had standing at just 5'4 but james madison was on the second biggest dollar bill ever printed he also is the last u.s president to lead troops in combat as president i don't mean lead troops in combat in general but uh he actually led troops during the war of 1812 and of course his wife dolly famously helped get the the picture of george washington and other famous portraits out of the white house before it was burned during the war this is a famous painting of george washington crossing the delaware river and this is james monroe james monroe was actually wounded in the battle of trenton and he's actually buried up just a few feet away from john tyler they're both buried on top of a hill uh in hollywood cemetery in richmond john quincy adams won the 18-24 election despite losing both the popular vote and the electoral college yep that's true too and uh what happens is in the united states if you're not familiar with how it works we have the electoral college and what happens is if uh neither candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes then the vote goes to the house of representatives and the way that they vote is it's each state gets one vote so say there's 15 congressmen and women from one state they would all vote and whatever person got the majority of their votes then that state would that one vote for that state would go to them so there's 50 total votes in whichever state delegations vote for the one candidate then they win and that's what happened adams was chosen by the house of representatives but then jackson defeated him in re-election four years later in 1806 andrew jackson challenged charles dickinson to a duel dickinson shot jackson in the chest jackson unfazed raised his pistol and killed dickinson jackson carried that bullet in his chest as well as another from a different duel for the rest of his life and there was also an assassination attempt on jackson somebody walked up with a pistol and pulled the trigger but it misfired and he started beating the guy with his cane jackson and teddy roosevelt probably the two toughest sobs we've ever had as president um that's all i'll say about jackson though um not a real big fan of his martin van buren had a new york gang named after him in the sitcom seinfeld i'm taking on the entire van buren boys van buren boys there's a street gang named after president martin van buren and van buren was the first president of the united states who was born after the united states became a nation uh he was his nickname was old kinderhook which some people say is where we got the phrase okay from but i don't know if that's true or not william henry harrison was allegedly cursed by an american indian which legend has it led to his death in the deaths of six other sitting presidents yeah so i've heard this story before and here in northeast ohio where i live there's even some people who claim that the curse happened by a tribe that lived in this area where i'm from yeah the the the story goes that he cursed uh starting with william henry harrison that every president born or elected in a year ending in zero would die in office and for a long time it actually happened and maybe that's why we have the legend harrison was the first president to die in office he was elected in 1840 lincoln was elected in 1860 garfield was elected in 1880 mckinley in 1900 so lincoln garfield mckinley were all assassinated harding elected in 1920 he died in office franklin roosevelt was elected in 1940 he died in office john f kennedy was elected in 1960 he died in office ronald reagan in the year 2000 in the year 1980 was elected and he was shot just a couple months into his term but he survived and since then we've apparently broken the curse hopefully uh george w bush was elected in 2000 didn't get uh didn't die in office and now hopefully we can say the same thing about our current uh well no wait 20 what year is it now it's 20 21. so joe biden was elected last year hopefully uh he will also keep that curse broken john tyler was born in 1790 and still as of this recording 230 years later has two living grandsons so i believe it's only one now i think one of them died a couple of months ago um one of his name was lion gardner tyler which is named after john tyler was married twice and he had a bunch of children with his first wife his second wife was julia gardner who's actually a cousin of my my wife because my wife's a descendant of this man named lion gardner uh from the 1600s and uh julia gardner was much much younger than john tyler he was in his 60s and had children well then one of their children had children in his 60s or 70s and these are the sons of that second man so yeah it's amazing and i think the other one's name is harrison uh tyler or something like that but he i think one of them is still alive james k hulk decided not to run for re-election in 1848 and died of cholera three months after leaving off okay so first of all this is like a little symbol from the game oregon trail which i grew up with so that's kind of awesome that they have that polk is buried on the grounds of the tennessee state capitol building in nashville there are two presidents buried in nashville andrew jackson and james k polk and polk i believe ran on a platform of i only need four years to get the stuff done that i want to get done and then he chose not to run for reelection office zachary taylor did run for president in 1848. two years later he got sick from eating cherries and milk at a fourth of july celebration and died five days later some speculate that he was poisoned now they actually exhumed zachary taylor from his grave in i think in louisville kentucky i've been to his grave and they actually did some tests and if you search on google you can actually find a picture of his skull like that the doctor posted uh pictures you know an image of him they exhumed his body did tests found no evidence of poison uh so he definitely died probably from some bad cherries and ice cream or something like that millard fillmore personally fought a fire that was overtaking the library of congress i did not know that that's the first one that i i wasn't aware of at all so that's kind of cool i think millard fillmore is buried in buffalo new york i think i've been to his grave too franklin pierce is widely regarded as the hottest president that's true uh and i don't know where that comes from uh not being attracted to men i can't really speak to that but i have heard people say that he was an attractive guy really sad story franklin pierce he um was on his way to washington to take office and he had one child a son uh who was who was young and there was a train accident and his son was decapitated in this train accident and and this happened right in front of his parents and uh franklin pierce fell into an understandable deep depression during his presidency uh pretty much practically drank himself to death um just very sad because who knows what he might have been able to do as president had that not happened glenn pierce is widely regarded as the hottest president james buchanan may have been gay abraham you can't that's true and i think a lot of that speculation comes from the fact that buchanan is the only president we've ever had who wasn't married he's also the only president we've ever had who was from pennsylvania which is really weird when you think about pennsylvania being one of the largest and one of the most influential states early in the nation's history and yet one president and it was the 15th and he was the guy who basically watched the civil war unfold on his watch lincoln's favorite food was oysters i did not know that i also what i did know about abraham lincoln is that he and george washington both are in the wrestling hall of fame both were fantastic wrestlers lincoln was known far and wide as an almost unbeatable wrestler he only ever lost one match in his life and there's a long story behind how that happened it may have been there may have been cheating involved for him to lose that one andrew johnson never went to school ulysses johnson never went to school and he also pretty much single-handedly screwed african-americans for the better part of a hundred years he was a democrat who was elected on the ticket with lincoln as a union ticket he was a southern democrat but he was also pro-slavery and a major racist and did everything he could to disrael derail reconstruction after the civil war grant was supposed to be at ford's theater with lincoln the night he was shot that's true and you know who was at ford's theater was ambrose burnside he was actually sitting down below the presidential box and some people have said that lincoln was looking at burnside when he was shot grant wanted to to see his kids his kids were in new jersey at the time and so he and his wife decided to skip go into the theater and there's actually a story that they were riding out of town and supposedly john wilkes booth actually rode up to the carriage and looked in the carriage and really scared julia grant uh by doing that i don't know how true that story is but at least i think according to her it was true but his wife despised mary todd lincoln that's true grant didn't particularly want to go possibly saving his life rutherford b hayes owned the first siamese cat in america and named him siam he was also known as rutherfraud for the suspicious way in which he won the election of 1876. after james garfield was shot alexander graham bell tried to use a makeshift metal detector to find the bullet in garfield's abdomen chester and the reason it didn't work is because it was laying on a bed that had metal springs underneath it and so they couldn't pick it out honestly if the doctors had done absolutely nothing to james garfield after he had been shot if they had just said here take some aspirin and go home he would have survived the doctors killed the man they were probing and prodding and and they ended up creating this gaping wound in his body that eventually got infected and ended up dying from the things the doctors did uh he actually lived a couple of months i think after he was shot and that was actually a defense that uh charles guiteau used in his trial was that he hadn't actually killed garfield the doctors did it didn't work he was hanged alan arthur chose to pronounce his middle name with the emphasis on the second syllable so he was actually chester allen arthur really that's kind of weird and i didn't know that but okay that's cool grover cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th president benjamin and cleveland uh though he's obviously much further down the line still a guy who was born i mean well before the civil war he's got living grandchildren as well he's got a grandson do a youtube search for grover cleveland grandson his grandson looks just like him like if i was walking down the street and i saw him i would know that was grover cleveland's grandson he looks that much like him harrison was the last american president with a beard yeah which is kind of weird because we had this long string of presidents who had a beard we also had a really long string almost unbroken of republicans from ohio who were civil war veterans and this went on for quite a while um you had grant was born in ohio then you have hayes who's born in ohio you had james garfield who was born in ohio all civil war veterans all republicans from ohio um then of course you have uh that little bit of a broken streak there with that benjamin harrison was born in ohio his grandfather was william henry harrison he was a civil war veteran william mckinley was a civil war veteran born in ohio um and then later on you have william howard taft and um warren harding who weren't veterans civil war veterans but they were also from ohio william mckinley had a pet parrot named washington post and he uh mckinley was known for wearing a scarlet carnation all the time and so that became the state flower of ohio after he was killed while running for a third term as president on a third party ticket theodore roosevelt was shot while giving a speech in milwaukee the bullet lodged itself near his ribs where it would remain for the rest of his life but roosevelt finished the speech the speech actually was hit by the bullet it was like a 17-page speech it was tucked in his pocket and they believed that it may have saved his life because it actually slowed the bullet down so it didn't go that deep into his body but yeah dude finished the speech after being shot i love that uh also incredible story about roosevelt is that he's the only guy to ever get a nobel peace prize and the medal of honor for gallantry in action during a war there's a popular myth that william howard taft got stuck in a bathtub while he was president there's no real evidence that that actually happened but taft did get stuck in a lifetime appointment to the supreme court after being president yeah one of two people who really actively served in the government after being president taft became supreme court justice supreme court um chief justice and john quincy adams went back to the house of representatives after being president which is you know we view that as a step down but that's kind of awesome that he did that his great grandson was the governor of ohio a number of years ago not a very popular one at that the only president to do so woodrow wilson kept a flock of sheep on the white house lawn and also you could argue his wife was the first woman president we've ever had his wife woodrow wilson had a stroke i think a year or two before he left office and was largely unseen and uncontacted after that everything was put through his wife his wife would would get bills that needed to be signed she'd take them in and then come back out with them signed and a lot of speculation that she was the one doing it nobody was really allowed access to wilson in the that last 18 months or so of his presidency in 2014 letters between warren harding and one of his mistresses were released to the public revealing that harding used jerry as a code name for his penis calvin and he also had a child with uh his one mistress and that's been i believe confirmed by dna coolidge was known as silent cow legend has it that during a dinner party a woman bet him that she could get at least three words from him during the evening at the end of you lose coolidge turned to her and said you lose i love that calvin cool is one of my favorite presidents just because there's so many things about him that are just so unassuming and so opposite of everything we think presidents are supposed to be i got a chance to visit his grave he's buried up in vermont beautiful location when i was up there i stopped by and got to see that herbert hoover was a quaker franklin delano that was a really quick one herbert hoover was a quaker um and we actually started to have a little string there of some midwestern presidents for a while this is also you know most of our presidents have been military veterans but there's this string of five presidents in a row who did not serve in the military ending with franklin roosevelt i think it goes back to i guess it would start with william howard taft woodrow wilson calvin coolidge or no i think it's probably wilson it would be wilson uh cal warren harding calvin coolidge uh herbert hoover and franklin roosevelt taft was in the military and then that ended of course with harry truman who was a artillery commander during the first world war roosevelt was married to anna eleanor the niece and god daughter of then president theodore roosevelt oh and she was also his fifth cousin yeah and uh franklin or teddy roosevelt actually walked her down the aisle because his brother her father had taken his own life a number of years before that so he walked eleanor down the aisle kind of interesting when you think about teddy uh he hated being called teddy uh theodore roosevelt uh being a republican of course and franklin roosevelt being a democrat both pretty progressive in their politics though harry s truman's parents could not decide whether his middle name should be solomon or ship so they compromised and had the s stand for nothing joy d eisenhower banned squirrels from the white house lawn he had secret service catch them and release them into rock creek park so that they wouldn't damage his putting green that's awesome interesting thing about dwight eisenhower he never led troops in combat even though he was one of our highest ranking generals in history uh during the first world war he was stateside uh working with the tank corps and training people and things like that uh and of course in the second world war he was always kind of in a staff position and then became supreme commander and it's not to say he wasn't a great leader and he was a very good president just the way his career worked out he never led troops in combat the average person can read 250 to 300 words per minute john f kennedy could reportedly read 1200 words per minute that's amazing i never have heard that before um i think he could have been a really good president had he had the chance to serve a little longer it's tough to judge him but i tell you what i give him all the credit in the world for how he handled the cuban missile crisis phenomenal job of leadership there lyndon b johnson started his career as a teacher in order to make ends meet on a great depression-era teacher salary johnson also worked as the school's janitor richard nixon that's kind of interesting um i don't really have anything to add to that let's see what else they say was a quaker gerald ford was a and richard nixon let me back up richard nixon's great grandfather george nixon was killed at the battle of gettysburg he's buried in the national cemetery there he was in an ohio regiment and was killed up on cemetery hill i think on july 2nd and the guy who actually rescued him while he lay there mortally wounded was given the medal of honor for saving or didn't save his life but got him off the battlefield so he could be treated for his wounds which proved to be fatal also worked as the school's janitor richard nixon was a quaker gerald ford was a model he was not only a model but as you saw in that picture he was a college football player played for the university of michigan i can't believe i even said that as a buckeye fan jimmy carter swears that he saw a ufo ronald reagan was an actor and well we know he was an actor you know in ronald reagan jimmy carter served on a nuclear submarine as an officer ronald reagan was also an officer in world war ii but he actually um was because he already had a career in acting was used as a narrator for um basically propaganda films films kind of drumming up support for the war you can actually see one uh one of the few videos online of george patton giving a speech and you can hear that ronald reagan is the narrator of that video and was almost strangled to death by a chimp while filming 1951's bedtime for bonzo george h.w bush celebrated his 85th birthday skydiving by skydiving and he also was the youngest naval aviator in world war ii he was shot down he was a um i think he was a i want to say he was a dauntless pilot i think he was a like a bomber pilot but i could be wrong about that but he served on a carrier i think was shot down and there's video of him being pulled out of the water by a submarine in 2012 while appearing on npr's wait wait don't tell me bill clinton correctly answered three trivia questions about the television show my little pony friendship is magic what i don't even know what to say to that that's kind of awesome george w bush owned the texas rangers and infamously facilitated the trade of sami sosa david beckham gave barack obama 50 pairs of boxer briefs wait wait what what i don't even know what to say to that one either that okay that's interesting um interestingly barack obama and george w bush are related the reason i know that is because i'm related through the same guy there was a um a lot of people don't know that the the mayflower was actually one of two ships that left together to head to america the mayflower and the speedwell well the speedwell kept springing leaks and so eventually it had to turn back and they loaded as many people as they could onto the mayflower from the speedwell but some people had to go back and one of the people who went back was a deacon among the pilgrim church a man named thomas blossom and thomas blossom is my ninth great grandfather uh and he's also an ancestor of barack obama and george w bush so they're actually something like eighth or ninth cousins through him donald trump may have bathmaphobia which is an irrational fear of stares really i've never heard that one before either know any more weird facts about presidents leave them in the comments so that was just kind of something fun to do because i've always been fascinated since i was a kid by presidential trivia if you have something to add something really unique and unusual that you know about one of the presidents use the comment section below and let us know about that and as i mentioned before please check out the original content creator give them a like and a comment and make sure you subscribe to this channel so you never miss another video thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 327,879

Keywords: american history, united states, donald trump, us history, george washington, us president, president facts, historian reacts, teddy roosevelt, thomas jefferson, james madison, president trump, fun facts for kids, founding fathers, every president, president of the united states, american presidents

Id: L9-3DsSZIoE

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021