Useless and Interesting Presidential Facts

As we approach President’s Day, it is time that we look back on the 43 great men that served as President of our great country. Here is a list of interesting facts about these Presidents.

We start with our current President, Barak Obama. We all know that he is the first Black President of the United States. This is a tremendous accomplishment and I am sure an honor for him to have that distinction. But even more distinctive (ok, you be the judge) is that President Obama is the first President whose last name begins with the letter “O”. Amazing! In fact, there are now only seven letters of the English alphabet left that do not begin a President’s last name. D, I, Q, U, X, Y and Z. And don’t say “Quincy Adams”. Quincy was his middle name.

H is the most popular letter to start a President’s last name. There have been five Presidents whose last name began with that letter: William Henry Harrison, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover. The letter C would make five if you counted Grover Cleveland twice for his two non-consecutive terms. Those Presidents are Grover Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, James Carter, and Bill Clinton.

Now let’s go to first names. The most common first name for a President is James. As a matter of fact, when James Garfield took office as the 20th President in 1881, he was the fifth President with that first name. This means that in the first 105 years of the country, 25% of all Presidents had the first name of James. The next 127 years to the present President, however, had only one President with that name: James Carter.

Only once in American History has two consecutive Presidents shared the same first name. That was James Madison and James Monroe who served as the fourth and fifth President respectively. The following President, John Quincy Adams, had a first name that started with the same letter, making three Presidents in a row that had their first name start with the same letter. Unusual? It happened only one other time when the 27th President William Taft started the trend with Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding to follow him in the White House.

Woodrow Wilson also holds the distinction of being the first President whose first and last name begins with the same letter. This also started a trend. While Warren Harding followed Wilson in the White House, he was succeeded by his Vice President Calvin Coolidge upon his death. Following Calvin Coolidge was Herbert Hoover. This phenomenon would not surface again until 47 years later when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980. Lastly, Herbert Hoover’s Vice President was Charles Curtis. This makes the only time in American History when both the President and Vice President had their first and last names starting with the same letter respectively. There was also only one time in American History where the President and Vice President had the same initials. 15th President James Buchanan’s Vice President was John Breckenridge.

Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson are the only two Presidents who shared the same last name without a relation. The other four names to be shared were Adams (John Adams and son John Quincy Adams), Harrison (William Henry Harrison and grandson Benjamin Harrison), Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt and distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt) and Bush (George Bush and son George W Bush).

So what does history tell us about these amazing Presidential facts? Well, absolutely nothing. But at the very least, I hope you found them interesting.