Interesting and Unusual Things About Our Presidents

It is President's Day which we celebrate every third Monday in February.  As a political science major, I have loved reading about presidents and I've always been fascinated by their lives.  Here are some things you probably did not know about the men who have served us as President of the United States.

1. Gerald Ford was a model who appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine.  His birth name was Leslie.

2. Theodore Roosevelt had the most pets as president with 48 including a black bear, a hyena, a badger, and a one legged rooster.

3. Herbert Hoover was a humanitarian before he was president. He's responsible for helping millions of Europeans survive after World War 1 by supplying a couple million tons of food through our government. There are streets and squares in Poland and Belgium that are named "Hoover" in his honor.

4. Ulysses S. Grant was pulled over for speeding and fined $20 for speeding on a horse while he was president.

5. Bill Clinton's cat had a video game named after it: "Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill."

6. Richard Nixon proposed to his wife the first day they met and it took her two years to say, "Yes." During those two years he drove her to go on dates with other guys.

7. Warren Harding bet White House china in a poker game and he lost.

8. George H. Bush considered naming actor Clint Eastwood  his running mate.

9. Martin Van Buren wrote his autobiography without mentioning his wife who had six children with him.

10. Lyndon Johnson issued the first medicare card to former President Harry Truman.

11. Before he was president Grover Cleveland was a hangman. As sheriff he hung two people.

12. In his two presidential elections, Ronald Reagan won the electoral vote by a combined 1,014 to 62.

13. Ronald Reagan was offered a part in Back to the Future 3, but he turned it down.

14.Soccer great David Beckham gave Barack Obama fifty pairs of boxer briefs as a gift.

15. Jimmy Carter wrote a children's book- "The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer."

16. Bill Clinton's first job was selling comic books.

17. Andrew Johnson was a tailor and he used to make his suits while he was President.