Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Did You Know?

I had a whole post and then Blogger went crazy and it disappeared so I'm going to try and recreate it.

I was cleaning out old bookmarks and rediscovered the Internet Public Library. While looking through the stacks I found the section on the Presidents of the United States. Did you know only 15 presidents, out of the 43 we've had, have served more than 4 years? 14 of them served 8 or more. Coolidge became president after Harding's death, was then elected and served 6 years but refused to run for another term which would have allowed him to serve 10 years. He thought the longer term wouldn't be good for him, his family, or the country. FDR ignored Coolidge's advice and was elected to a 3rd term and then 4th term* but didn't live to talk about it. 8 of our presidents died in office, 4 of those were assassinated. Lot's of interesting facts. I may just do some more studying, starting with Washington and working my way forward.

And speaking of presidencies, if you think campaigning is rough these days, you should read about how vicious campaigning was in the olden days.

*updated to reflect the comment. Bad editor, bad editor.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FDR was elected fpur times. 1932, 1936, 1940, & 1944. He died in 1945