As Barack Obama prepares to become the 44th president of the United States of America, we look at some of the stranger facts from Presidential history….

1.The inauguration of Andrew Johnson as Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president in 1865 was marred slightly by the fact that Johnson was incredibly drunk. He’d been downing whiskey in an effort to medicate himself for typhoid fever (that was his excuse, anyway) and was so far gone by the time he was sworn in that he slurred his oaths, and had to abandon his attempts to swear in new senators.

Barack Obama and George Bush struggle to make it US President weird list



2.These days, most presidents have a cat or a dog as their presidential pet. However, John Quincy Adams and Herbert Hoover both had pet alligators, Calvin Coolidge had two lions, a wallaby, and a pygmy hippopotamus (among others), while Theodore Roosevelt kept a badger called Josiah who used to bite people.


3.William Henry Harrison’s 1841 term as the ninth president is the shortest ever – he made it through just under 31 days of presidency before inconveniently dying of pneumonia.

4.Sucky presidential nicknames: Andrew Jackson was known as ‘Old Hickory’, Ulysses S. Grant was unflatteringly known as ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’, short-lived William Henry Harrison was ‘Tippecanoe’, and Zachary Taylor revelled in the name ‘Old Rough And Ready’.

5.Twentieth president James Garfield had a party trick in which he would simultaneously write in Latin with one hand, and Ancient Greek with the other. Show-off.

6.The only president to get married in the White House was Grover Cleveland in 1886. The 49-year-old Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, who he called ‘Frank’, and whose legal guardian he had previously been after her father (a close friend of his) died. This would probably be more controversial if it happened today.

7.The Secret Service has codenames for the president, vice-president and their family members. Ronald Reagan was ‘Rawhide’, George H. W. Bush was ‘Timberwolf’, Bill Clinton was ‘Eagle’, George W. Bush was ‘Trailblazer’ and Barack Obama is ‘Renegade’. Al Gore’s daughter Karenna frequently complained that she was put on the spot and told to choose her own code name; she quickly regretted opting to be called ‘Smurfette’ wherever she went.

8.William Howard Taft was the heaviest American president – so large that he occasionally got stuck in the White House bath, and had to be helped out by aides. He eventually got a bigger bath.

9.In elections since the end of WWII, the taller of the two main party candidates has won the election 75% of the time. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are the only post-war presidents to have defeated taller rivals. Since 1900, nobody under the height of 5ft 9in has ever won the presidential election.

10.Thomas Jefferson, the third (and many would say greatest) president of the United States was not merely one of the key Founding Fathers and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence – he also invented the swivel chair.