Random Facts 36 - Presidential Facts

George Washington
Fact 1: Mason Locke Weems wrote "A History of the Life & Death, Virtues & Exploits of General George Washington" of which the alleged exploits included; chopping down the cherry tree, I cannot tell a lie & throwing a dollar across the Rappahannock river.
Fact 2: The Revolutionary War put Washington in series financial straits, and accepting the highest office in the land (something he loathed to assume) was the answer to his money troubles. Earning a salary of $25,000 (about a million today) of which 7% went to alcohol.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.6 & 8.

Thomas Jefferson
Fact 3: Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a fiery condemnation of slavery, but the Continental Congress struck it from the document.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.18.

Andrew Jackson
Fact 4: During the Creek War in 1813, an entire brigade of his men (including officers) threatened to return to North Tennessee exhausted and nearly starving. Jackson promptly rode his horse to the front of the column, leveled his musket and threatened to shoot anyone who moved that way - and it worked.
Fact 5: Rumored to have fought in over a hundred duels. .In 1806, in a duel, Charles Dickinson shot Jackson first dead center in his chest 24 feet away. Jackson staunched the blood flow with his left hand, and hit Dickinson below the ribs killing him. The bullet lodged close to Jacksons heart remained so for life.
Fact 6: In a 1813 scuffle, he received a gunshot wound in the arm and shoulder - and the bullets were removed 20 years later.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.45-47.

Martin Van Buren
Fact 7: Van Buren's angst over the financial panic 1837 gave him a chronic upset stomach. His remedy was a concoction of soot and charcoal mixed in water.
Fact 8: In his autobiography he did not mention his wife, Hannah Hoes Van Buren, one time.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.52-53.

Franklin Pierce
Fact 9: Two months prior to his swearing in, and shortly after boarding a train in Boston, the president-elect and family found themselves on a derailing car and rolled down an embankment. There was one fatality whose head was crushed, their 11-year old son Bennie.
Fact 10: First to have a full-time bodyguard on the governments tab. Thomas O'Neil served with Pierce in the Mexican War.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.79-80.

James Buchanan
Fact 11: Only American President never to have married. He was briefly engaged at 28. His fiancee was Anne Coleman, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Pennsylvania. Her parents were concerned she was to marry beneath her and that Buchanan was only after their fortune. Anne broke the engagement. She went to visit her sister, became ill and died. Rumors say she committed suicide. Buchanan wrote a heartfelt letter to Anne's father, and pleaded to follow her coffin in the mourning procession. The letter was returned unopened.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.86-87.

Abraham Lincoln
Fact 12: As a child he was kicked in the forehead by a horse, and lived to tell about it.
Fact 13: In 1862, Sioux Indians on the verge of starvation attacked white settlements in Minnesota, killing more than 800. Union troops eventually subdued them and condemned 307 of them to hang. Lincoln interjected reviewed each one, and reduced them to 38 - which is the largest authorized mass hanging in American history.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.93, 95-96.

Rutherford B Hayes
Fact 14: He and his family could be found every morning on their knees at prayer, and every night spent singing gospel hymns.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.115.

Theodore Roosevelt
Fact 15: First to ride in an automobile, airplane, submarine and travel outside the US during the presidency.
Fact 16: Survived many accidents too - hurled through a glass window when his vessel collided in New Mexico, while boxing in the White House with heavyweight champion John Sullivan he received a blow that left him blind in his left eye, landed on his face when his carriage collided with a trolley - a large bruise on his leg swelled until doctors cut it down to the bone to remove dying tissue.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.149-150.

William Howard Taft
Fact 17: Had the alarming habit of falling asleep.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.155.

Ulysses S Grant
Fact 18: His wife Julia Boggs Dent Grant was severely cross-eyed as a result of being accidentally hit by an oar as a child.
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.175.

George HW Bush
Fact 19: Mary Tillotson was one of the first journalists to ask a sitting president about an affair. Those who knew him made plenty of claims that he cheated on his wife with many women including his secretary Jennifer Fitzgerald Bush remarked to Tillotson, "I'm not going to take any sleazy questions like that from CNN. I am very disappointed that you would ask such a question of me, and I will not respond to it."
Secret Lives of the US Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, 2004, p.255.