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Have you ever wondered...

What are some interesting facts about presidents and first ladies?

The Clintons with Three Former Presidents and Four Former First Ladies

This photograph of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton posing with former presidents and first ladies was taken in November 2000, during a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the White House. The presidents in the top row include, from left to right, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Seated below, also from left to right, are first ladies Barbara Bush, Lady Bird Johnson, Clinton, Betty Ford, and Rosalynn Carter.

William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum/NARA

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  • The Fourth of July is a date on which three presidents died – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (both in 1826) and James Monroe (1831). It is also the birthday of one president: Calvin Coolidge in 1872.
  • Nearly every president from Abraham Lincoln to William Howard Taft sported some form of facial hair. The exceptions to these were Andrew Johnson and William McKinley.
  • Mary Todd Lincoln held seances in the Red Room of the White House to communicate with the spirits of loved ones who had died.
  • Rutherford B. Hayes was the first president to have a telephone and a typewriter in the White House – the telephone was installed in May 1879 and the typewriter arrived in February 1880.
  • A White House staff member, Charles Reeder, once snuck Algonquin, a pony that belonged to Theodore Roosevelt’s children, up the White House elevator to visit Archie Roosevelt while he was sick in bed with the measles.
  • As a good will gesture toward the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy a dog named Pushinka, which means "fluffy" in Russian. She was the daughter of Strelka, a Russian dog sent to space by the soviets.
  • In 1973, President Richard Nixon and First Lady Thelma “Pat” Nixon, both avid bowlers, had a one-lane bowling alley built in an underground workspace below the North Portico driveway of the White House.

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