Name: 44 Facts About the U.S. Presidents - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.52)
Uploaded: 2014-09-16T08:13:39.000Z
Duration: 8 min 48 s
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Hi I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon and my fake fireplace. This is Mental Floss on

Basic passive voice

YouTube and did you know that George Washington is considered by experts to be America’s

richest president? I mean, in today’s terms, Washington’s net worth was around 500 million

Anyway, that’s the first of 44 facts about American presidents that I’m going to share

with you today. One for each presidency. That’s right, Grover Cleveland gets two facts.

Although of course these days you know him as a Founding Father, as a lawyer, John Adams

defended the eight British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre and he got six of them

The Jeffersonia plant[a] is actually named after Thomas Jefferson. Botanist Benjamin

Smith Barton knew that Jefferson was interested in botany, so in 1792, he renamed the wildflower

James Madison’s second cousin was American president Zachary Taylor.

The capital of Liberia, Monrovia, is named after James Monroe.

John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa used the Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley method

of baby naming. Their four kids were called George Washington Adams, John Adams the second,

In 1835, a man named Richard Lawrence tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson. Lawrence’s

two separate pistols both misfired, then Andrew Jackson chased him away with a walking cane.

The first president to be born a citizen of the United States was Martin “Look at those

sideburns” Van Buren. Although for the record, they weren’t called sideburns at the time,

they were called side whiskers. They wouldn’t be known as sideburns until Civil War general

Ambrose Burnside. Extra fact for you today on Mental Floss!

William Henry Harrison dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School

and then went on to be a quitter as president as well because he died after just, like,

John Tyler had the most children of any president [b]- eight with his first wife and seven with

his second wife for a grand total of fifteen kids.

When he was a baby, James K. Polk’s parents intended to baptize him as a Presbyterian.

But his father, Samuel Polk, wouldn’t profess his own faith, which the ceremony required.

Samuel got into a fight with the minister and the baptism never happened. James was

baptized, however, later in life, as a Methodist. I mean, much later in life. It was on his

Before he was president, Zachary Taylor had never voted.

Millard Fillmore’s great-grandfather was a pirate.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce attended Bowdoin College together, which helps explains

why Hawthorne later wrote the biography “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” a boring subject

for a very boring writer. I’m just kidding, I like The Scarlet Letter.

Anyway, James Buchanan never married, so his niece, Harriet Lane, took on the role of hostess

for White House events. She developed a large art collection throughout her life, which

she left to the government. The Smithsonian Institution knows her as the “First Lady

of the National Collection of Fine Arts.” She was also previously mentioned in a Mental

Floss video for having married her cousin.

Abraham Lincoln, also pictured down there, had a son named Robert Todd Lincoln, who was

not at Ford’s Theater when his father was assassinated. BUT, he witnessed the assassinations

of both James A. Garfield and William McKinley. Mark, I think that was technically two facts.

Can I skip a president now? Can I skip Rutherford B. Hayes please or one of the Grover Clevelands?

A physician named Samuel Mudd bandaged up John Wilkes Booth’s leg after Booth shot

Lincoln. It was unclear what information Mudd had, but he was convicted of conspiracy to

kill the president. In 1869, Andrew Johnson pardoned Dr. Mudd[c][d] but the whole thing

Legend has it that Ulysses S. Grant smoked somewhere between seven and twenty cigars

a day. He’s also the only president, so far, to die of cancer. It was throat cancer.

During the Civil War, four of Rutherford B. Hayes’s horses were shot while he was riding

them. I mean, not all four at the same time. No one can ride four horses simultaneously.

You know what I meant. [e]Oh, come on, Mark, I guess it’s technically possible to ride

When James A. Garfield was shot, Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, tried

to locate the bullet with a metal detector that he had invented. The invention was a

And that brings us to Chester A. Arthur, who liked fashion, hence his nicknames “Gentleman

Boss” and “Elegant Arthur.” He allegedly owned over 80 pairs of pants.

During Grover Cleveland’s first term, he got married in the White House. He married

the 21 year old daughter of one of his former law partners. He was 49, and had known the

girl since she was born. That’s creepy.

In 1878, the body of Benjamin Harrison’s father was stolen by grave robbers. It was

recovered at the Ohio Medical School in Cincinnati and returned to its rightful spot.

In 1893, at the beginning of his second term, Grover Cleveland had a secret surgery to remove

a tumor from the roof of his mouth which surgery turned out, of course, to be successful, as

you already know because of the Ulysses S. Grant thing.

The TV shows Glee[f], Freaks and Geeks, and The Wonder Years all feature the same fictional

high school: William McKinley High. Why? Well, according to Judd Apatow, who produced Freaks

and Geeks, “We chose it because it was the only president’s name which was legally

Teddy Roosevelt gave the White House its name in 1901.

Then, Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, built the first Oval Office, before

Did you know that there is a 100,000 dollar bill? They were only made between December

18, 1934 and January 9, 1935. And only they were only created for use within the Federal

Reserve Banks. But, if you ever see Woodrow Wilson’s face on a bill, you are about to

Though JFK’s assassination is most commonly associated with conspiracy theorists, Warren

G. Harding’s death has attracted some as well. His wife, Florence, was even accused

of murdering him in the 1930 book, “The Strange Death of President Harding.”

Calvin Coolidge was born on the Fourth of July, which was the last interesting thing

Herbert Hoover was sworn into office by William Howard Taft.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an airplane[h] while in office.

In 1943, he flew to North Africa to strategize with Winston Churchill about World War II.

It took Roosevelt and co. four days to get there because of all the stopping and refueling.

Harry S. Truman is the only president from the twentieth century or later who did not

Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to play golf so much that he was good friends with Arnold

When John F. Kennedy applied to Harvard University, his father[i] wrote a letter to the admissions

dean describing JFK as “careless,” but “ambitious.”

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44 Facts About the U.S. Presidents - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.52)

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