Long Live Carter and Mondale!

toggle caption Warren K. Leffler/Library of Congress

We learn from a release today from the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum that former President Carter and his number two, Walter Mondale, are about to become the longest-living post-administration president/vice president team in U.S. history. On May 23, 2006, they will have lived 25 years and 123 days after leaving office. That breaks the record of President John Adams and his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, who lived 25 years and 122 days after leaving office. They died, coincidentally on the same day, July 4, 1826.

Pretty remarkable feat. I think of Herbert Hoover living until 1964, when he was 90 years old. But NPR's crack librarian Kee Malesky tells us that his vice president, Charles Curtis, died in 1936.

On a related note, Ken Rudin is the oldest person in NPR history to host the Mixed Signals blog.