I decided to step away from a journal entry today and offer up some unusual tidbits of presidential trivia.  Since the political winds are once again beginning to blow I thought it might interest some of you. This information has been chosen at random and I’m not picking on any one party. To be sure, there’s enough useless information coming out of both parties to make everyone happy.  Here we go. . .

• Edith Wilson, the wife of Woodrow Wilson, often rode a bicycle in the corridors of the White House.
• Richard M. Nixon  once worked as a carnival barker.
• Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird that followed him upstairs to bed every night.
• First Lady Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, used to hang laundry in the White House East Room to dry.
• David Rice Atchison, a state senator from Missouri (1843-1855), was President of the United States for one day.

Who knew we had a president for just one day?  I can think of quite a few others I would have loved to have for only one day.

• Calvin Coolidge, President from 1923 to 929, was the last President to write his own speeches.
• President Jimmy Carter was the first president born in a hospital.
• Ronald Reagan received over seventy-five thousand gifts, including three hundred seventy-two belt buckles, a dog house, a six foot long pencil, and a four-square-foot portrait made out of ten thousand jelly beans.
• When Zachary Taylor became President in 1849, he kept his horse “Old Whitey” on the front lawn of the White House.
• Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested near the White House and fined twenty dollars for driving a team of horses too fast.

I don’t doubt for a minute that Grant was probably under the influence of some unknown alcoholic beverage. That’s the same guy who once upon a time allegedly threw up on one of his officers .

• The middle initial “S” in President Harry S. Truman’s name didn’t stand for anything.
• John Tyler (1790-1862), 10th president, was unable to get a decent job after leaving office and worked at a village pound tending cows and horses.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), once delivered a one-hour speech in spite of being shot moments before by a would-be assassin.
• President George H.W. Bush banned broccoli from the White House in March 1990, the California broccoli growers delivered nine tons of the vegetable to Washington.
• President Millard Fillmore, in 1851, became the first chief executive to use a bathtub in the White House.

Here’s a special bonus entry for JFK. He was known for a lot of questionable shenanigans but I’ll be nice and take the high road today. He was also the first President born in the twentieth century.

That should do it for today.  More to come. . .