Today is President's Day!

In honor of President's Day here are a few things you might not know about our past presidents.

• George Washington, our 1st President, only went to school off and on and only until he was 15.
• John Adams, our 2nd President, was the first president to live in the White House.  Construction was not complete and neither he nor his wife, Abigail, liked it much. 
• Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd President, formed the Republican party, but years later the Republicans began to call themselves Democrats.
• James Madison, our 4th President, had one eye that was far sighted, and one eye that was near sighted.
• Elizabeth Jackson, mother to our 7th President Andrew Jackson, hoped her son would become a Presbyterian minister.  However, young Andrew never mastered spelling and grammer, so his mother resigned herself to the fact that he would never be a minister.  Jackson was also the first president to be born in a log cabin.
• Andrew Johnson, our 17th President, never went to school.  His wife, Eliza, taught her husband to write and helped him with his reading.
• Chester Arthur, our 21st President, had two bathrooms and an elevator installed in the White House.
• The only wedding of a President in the White House took place in the Blue Room at 7 p.m. on June 2, 1886. Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th President, married Frances Folsom who was 21 when she married the 49 year old president.
• William Taft, our 27th President, was the only president to keep cows on the White House Lawn.  He was also the only man who served as both President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
• Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President, inspected the White House staff and stressed economy.  He once wondered if six small hams were too much for 60 dinner guests.
• Harry S. Truman, our 33rd President, had read all of the books in the Independence, Missouri Library by the time he was 13 or 14 years old.
• John F. Kennedy, our 35th President, was a naval lieutenant during WWII.  His PT boat sank due to Japanese fire, but JFK rescued his crew.  Kennedy swam for five hours with the strap of one crewman's life jacket between his teeth.
• Gerald Ford, our 38th President, is the only man to have been both vice-president and president without having being elected to either office.
• George W. Bush, our 43rd President, was a cheerleader during high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Facts are taken from The World Book of America's Presidents and The Look-It-Up Book of Presidents.  Both books are available at Franklin County Library.