A Brief History
On February 22, 1974, President Richard Nixon was the target of a failed assassination attempt. Failed attempts at presidential assassinations are numerous, including the first, in 1835, when President Andrew Jackson beat the would be assassin senseless with his cane, after the assassin’s pistol misfired.
Digging Deeper
An assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt after he left the White House left the macho ex-president with a bullet in his chest for life, but that did not stop him from delivering his scheduled speech moments later. In fact, the folded-up speech in TR’s pocket may have saved his life, slowing the bullet down. Aside from the many attempted assassinations and four successful assassinations of US presidents, today we look at some presidential facts you may be unaware of.
The first topic is names, as in the real names of presidents that did not use their given birth names. Ulysses Grant was born Hiram U. Grant, Grover Cleveland was born Stephen G. Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson was born Thomas W. Wilson, and Gerald Ford was born Leslie King, Jr. Perhaps you like Ike, who was really Dwight Eisenhower.
Speaking of Grover Cleveland, the first president to serve two non-consecutive terms, Cleveland suffered from a form of mouth cancer while in office and had part of his upper jaw removed in secrecy aboard a friend’s yacht, and was fitted with a prosthesis to hide his disfigurement from the public.
President Harding is rumored to have lost the White House China in a card game, but in truth he only lost some of it, which is still pretty bad. Harding did hold parties and card games where he served illegal whisky in the White House during Prohibition.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is the craziest presidential fact?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Pryor, Cheryl. The Big Book Of Presidential Trivia: Test your knowledge on the Presidents: Over 1,000 trivia questions. Arlington & Amelia Publishers, 2016.
Stine, Megan. Who Was Richard Nixon? Penguin Workshop, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a lithograph by Endicott & Co. (1835) of the attempted assassination of the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
