The definitive Snopes compendium of useless Presidential trivia

Middle names, tattoos, $1,000 bills and more – amaze your friends with these President’s Day facts from the Snopes archives:

1. Presidents Day is not literally a federal holiday.

Columbus gets one. So does Christmas Day. But the third Monday in February is “Washington’s birthday” under federal law, although it has become colloquially known as the more inclusive “President’s Day.”

2. Political agent Roger Stone has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back.

3. Grover Cleveland’s face once graced a $1,000 bill.

Between 1928 and 1945, the US Treasury Department printed three rounds of $1,000 bills with Cleveland’s face on them. Notes in denominations of $5,000 and even $10,000 were also produced at various locations. The practice of circulating large denomination notes ended in 1969 due to what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing described as “underuse”.

4. Donald Trump was the first President in history to lose the popular vote twice, not be re-elected and impeached.

Since 1789, five presidents have been elected despite losing the popular vote, 15 have failed to be re-elected, and three have been impeached by the House of Representatives. But only one, Trump, has “achieved” all three.

5. Harry S. Truman’s middle name stood for “S”.

As we wrote 20 years ago:

Unable to decide between a middle name that would represent Harry’s maternal grandfather (Solomon Young) or his paternal grandfather (Anderson Shipp[e] Truman), John and Martha opted not to give little Harry a middle name at all, opting for something that could represent both grandparents: the letter “S” on its own. (As Truman biographer David McCullough observed, the use of a single letter standing for nothing in particular was “a practice not unknown among the Scots-Irish, even for first names.”)

6. Before Donald Trump, William McKinley was the last president not to have a dog in the White House.

In 2020, a pro-Biden group called Dog Lovers for Joe made Trump’s break with tradition a campaign issue, even running a political ad with the slogan “Choose your human wisely.”

7. John Tyler, who was the 10th US President and was born in the 18th century, had a surviving grandson as of February 2022.

As Snopes explained in 2013:

This remarkably short line of advancement is due to a confluence of factors not common in modern American society but not once so uncommon: men (especially widowers) marrying much younger women late in life, and large numbers of children procreate.

8. In 1992, Abraham Lincoln was honored by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

“A formidable physical specimen at 6-foot-4, Lincoln was well known for his wrestling prowess,” the citation reads, “and had only one recorded loss in a dozen years.”

9. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are the longest-married couple in Presidential history.

In July 2021, the couple celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary. George HW and Barbara Bush were married for 73 years, from 1945 until the former First Lady’s death in 2018.

10. In January 2020, Jill Biden became the oldest first lady in American history.

She is also the first 70-year-old FLOTUS to reach this milestone on her 70th birthday in June 2021 youngest First lady of history? That would be 20-year-old Sarah “Angelica” Van Buren, daughter-in-law of Martin, the eighth president, whose own wife, Hannah, died several years before reaching the White House.