Becoming president of the United States is not easy. Some people devote years to the goal and never succeed, like Lyndon LaRouche, who ran for president eight times and never succeeded. Others show up once and inexplicably win. And while being president is impressive in itself, a number of presidents have also had other remarkable claims to fame that they could make that have followed them throughout history.
10. Lincoln is the only president who has a patent
Near 25% participants polls identify Benjamin Franklin as a former president, even though he was never one. But Franklin was a remarkable inventor. When you remove him from the list of presidents, the number of real inventors who were presidents drops significantly. In fact, only one president ever had a patent issued in their name, and that was Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was elected in 1861, but a few years earlier, in 1849, he received a patent for a device that could be used to tow ships in shallow water. Patent #6469 was Lincoln's only patent and came about as a result of his work as a ferryman who had to deal with the hassle of ferrying a ship across shallows. He was stranded twice when his boats ran aground.
The invention was essentially an airbag for a boat. Inflatable devices could be lowered onto the sides of the boat, inflated, and used to propel the boat over shallows and back into the water. Apparently, it was never built , and there is some doubt whether it will work at all.
9. Teddy Roosevelt is the only president to have a tattoo (sort of)
They say that 30% Americans have tattoos as of 2019. That means that statistically, about 13 presidents should have had tattoos. Sure, no one had tattoos during Washington's time, but surely at least one president had a tattoo, right? Well, yeah. Just one. At least after the mod.
While there are rumors that both Roosevelts were tattooed, along with Polk, Eisenhower, and even Andrew Jackson, there is only one confirmed presidential tattoo, and it belonged to the toughest man to ever hold the office: Teddy Roosevelt. .
You can Google it right now and find a ton of articles claiming Roosevelt had his family crest tattooed on his chest. It turns out that's not true. It started as a joke in an old humor magazine. 1912 They included doctored photographs of Roosevelt with tattoos to sell the joke.
Roosevelt actually had a tattoo on his chest, but it was unintentional. Ever the man, apparently the president encountered gunpowder when he was 13 and got a gunpowder tattoo on his chest. That's what you call it when you fire a gun and the hot powder hits your flesh, burning its way into you, leaving a permanent reminder.
8. Martin Van Buren was the only president who spoke English as a second language.
Most American presidents speak only English. However less, over the years there were several bilingual presidents . A number of early presidents, such as John Adams and James Monroe, spoke fluent French. Both Roosevelts could speak some German, as could Bill Clinton. Some even spoke Latin. But Martin Van Buren wasn't just the only one who spoke Dutch, he was the only one for whom English was second language .
Van Buren's family was Dutch, and although he was born in Kinderhook, New York , he grew up speaking his family's native language and later learned English. His father owned a tavern, which was the main center of political activity in any community at the time. People would gather, drink, and talk politics, so he would have been exposed from an early age.
7. Woodrow Wilson was the only president with a doctorate.
When you dig into the topic of “who was the smartest president,” you’ll find a lot of answers and probably a lot of insults. Intelligence, of course, isn’t as easy to measure as some might think. But we can at least compare how educated and experienced presidents were to see how they stack up against each other. And while many had different careers and educations, practicing law and other such things, only one president ever earned a Ph.D.
Woodrow Wilson, who served from 1913 to 1921, received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. His area of expertise was political science , which seems appropriate.
A number of presidents have had degrees, but they did not stay with them. Washington received surveyor's license college but did not receive a bachelor's degree. Lincoln, Van Buren, Jackson, Fillmore, Taylor, and Cleveland never attended college. Truman, McKinley, Monroe, and Harrison attended college but never received degrees.
6. James Buchanan was the only bachelor president.
These days, we take it for granted that the president has a first lady. When a woman is elected, if she is married, her husband will most likely be called the First Gentleman. James Buchanan is the only president so far to break this tradition a bit, as he was the only president ever elected bachelor .
He was engaged for many years before taking office, but broke off the engagement shortly before the wedding. During his tenure, he had a "sort of" first lady in the form of his niece Harriet Lane She is said to have performed many of the same functions as other first ladies and became quite popular as a result.
5. President Tyler is the only president who was not buried under the American flag.
When a president dies, the funeral is usually a big deal. There is a state funeral and people from all over the country will come to pay their respects. When died in 2018 George Bush Sr. , was attended by world leaders, and a day of mourning was held. President Bush's casket, draped in the American flag, was on public display. It was like every presidential funeral before it, with one notable exception.
When John Tyler died, he was the only president in history to be buried under a flag that did not belong to the country he represented. Instead, he was buried under the Confederate flag. There's a reason Tyler is commonly considered one of worst presidents in history.
Tyler is buried atHollywood Cemetery, which, despite its name, is located in Richmond, Virginia. His funeral was the only one not officially recognized in Washington. Confederate President Jefferson Davis turned the funeral into a spectacle and hung the Confederate flag on the president's coffin.
4. Rutherford B. Hayes is the only president who is respected in Paraguay.
You can't shake a stick without hitting something named after Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and so on. Schools, bridges, parks, roads, you name it. There's no end to what's named after some of the most iconic presidents across the country. But what about outside the U.S.?
One president stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to recognition on foreign soil. Rutherford B. Hayes is a legend in his own right. Paraguay . Unlike America, where almost nothing is named after Hayes, Paraguay offers a river, a province, a city, and even a football team named after the one-term president.
The reason for Paraguay's love affair with Hayes dates back to 1877. After Paraguay went to war with Brazil and Argentina, the country lost a huge amount of land to other countries. When Argentina tried to lay claim to a piece of wilderness, the two countries agreed to forgo an actual war in favor of neutral third-party arbitration. This was before the United Nations existed, so the countries asked the United States to determine who got the land. President Hayes decided in favor of Paraguay , making him a local hero for years to come.
3. James Madison was a tiny man.
You can think of the president as a larger-than-life character. It helps that some presidents have actually been incredibly large. Abe Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall. Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump were both about 6 feet 3 inches tall. But if Lincoln is the tallest (and he was), then one of these 46 men must be the shortest. The shortest president in history was James Madison, and it takes a little time to realize just how frail he was. He was short, and supposedly incredibly light.
Official records show that Madison's height was 5 feet 4 inches His weight seemed to fluctuate somewhere around 100 pounds . This is usually considered underweight for a man of his stature. It was also said that he spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him when he gave speeches.
2. Ronald Reagan was the only president to wear a Nazi uniform (in a movie)
It’s hard to find a more deservedly hated group in modern history than the Nazis. They were terrible in almost every way imaginable. Since the war ended, and even before that, in fact, they’ve been a staple of pop culture. They’re almost perfect villains, and any hero can thwart them without risking offending people by using them as foils in the story, because they’re so terrible that no one wants to see them destroyed. That’s why Captain America has been taking down Nazis since the early 1940s, and there have been literally hundreds of movies featuring other heroes doing the same.
The task of playing a Nazi in a movie must be at least a little challenging for actors who don't want people to associate them with hatred, but if we all understand that it's fiction, what's wrong with that, right? And maybe that's why the only president in American history who ever wore a Nazi uniform, at least that we know of, was the one who starred in a movie. Ronald Reagan once dressed up as a Nazi in a movie "Desperate Journey" in 1942.
1. Grover Cleveland is the only president to work as an executioner.
No one's first job is ever president. You have to do a lot to get to that point. In fact, you can't even be president unless you're 35 years old. That means every president probably had several jobs before they took their seat. Some were senators or congressmen, some were lawyers or businessmen. And Grover Cleveland? He was executioner .
Before taking office, Cleveland was a lawyer in New York City. He served as sheriff of Erie County, a job that also included double duty as the county's executioner. The method of choice at the time, which was the mid-1800s, was hanging.
During his tenure as sheriff/executioner, Cleveland was responsible for execution of two men Both were murderers, and both were publicly hanged by Cleveland.
Cleveland was not the only president , who committed suicide—many of them had been soldiers before taking office, and had fought in battles in which men had died. Some, like Andrew Jackson, had fought duels. Cleveland was the only one to do so, presumably with a black bag over his head, in an official capacity.
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