Presidents Old and New
We celebrate Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 19. This holiday began as a tribute to President George Washington and was scheduled near his birthday, Feb. 22. In fact, the official name of the federal holiday is still Washington’s Birthday.
This week, The Mini Page celebrates Presidents Day by getting to know our first five and most recent five presidents. (The number next to each president’s name shows the order in which he served.)
George Washington (1)
• Washington was the only president to have a state named after him.
• He gave the shortest inauguration speech ever, 133 words, at his second inauguration in 1793.
John Adams (2)
• Adams was the first president to live in the White House. He moved in before it was completely finished in 1800.
Thomas Jefferson (3)
• Jefferson sold about 6,000 of his own books to help start the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
• In 1819, he founded the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
James Madison (4)
• Madison spoke in such a soft voice that people often had to ask him to speak up.
• Madison was the shortest president. He was only 5 feet 4 inches tall. He weighed 100 pounds.
James Monroe (5)
• As George Washington’s ambassador to France, Monroe helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
• About Monroe, Jefferson said, “Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out, there would not be a spot on it.”
Bill Clinton (42)
• Clinton met President
John F. Kennedy when he was in high school. He said that meeting led him to a life of public service.
• Clinton is the only president to have been a Rhodes Scholar.
George W. Bush (43)
• Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, served as the country’s 41st president.
• Bush was the president during the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Barack Obama (44)
• Obama was the first African American president in the United States. His father was from Kenya, and his mother was born in Wichita, Kansas.
• Obama was elected to a second term in office in 2012. He was the fourth president to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.
Donald Trump (45)
• Trump, a business owner, was elected in 2016. He had never served in a governmental role before.
• Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 but is running again in the 2024 presidential election.
Joe Biden (46)
• Biden served in the
U.S. Senate, representing Delaware, for 36 years before becoming Obama’s vice president in 2008.
• Sadly, Biden lost his wife, Neilia, and their daughter, Naomi, in a car accident in 1972. Biden later married first lady Jill Biden.
• With careful therapy, Biden overcame a stuttering problem that he’d had since he was a boy.