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Jason English
Three Things I Didn’t Know About The Vice Presidency
by Jason English - February 16, 2007 - 1:23 PM

VP.jpg• Between July 10, 1850, and March 3, 1857, the Office of Vice President was vacant for all but forty-five days.

• The 12-year-old who taught Vice President Dan Quayle how to spell “potato” dropped out of high school at age 16.

• The following people I’d never heard of served as VP: George Dallas (1845-1849), Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814), Thomas Hendricks (almost nine months in 1885) and Garret Hobart (1897-1899).

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Comments (6)

  1. Haven’t heard of Elbridge Gerry? Really? He was in both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. More importantly, he’s the guy for whom “gerrymander” was named. (Granted, I might not have known he was VP, but just sayin’…)

    posted by Nick on 2-16-2007 at 2:02 pm

  2. He’s new to me. Admitting that was cathartic.

    posted by Jason on 2-16-2007 at 2:05 pm

  3. Did you know that William Rufus King (VP to Pierce) was sworn in down in Cuba, then went to his home in Alabama and promptly died never having set foot in Washington as VP?

    Also, FDR’s first VP, “Cactus Jack” Garner once said that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a warm bucket of spit…. though everyone is SURE he said shit and the papers cleaned up his often colorful rhetoric!

    posted by Warner Todd Huston on 2-18-2007 at 8:12 am

  4. I’m also astonished you had not heard of Elbridge Gerry.

    posted by gjd on 2-18-2007 at 8:22 pm

  5. As fictional Vice President John Hoynes once (almost) said, “The total tonnage of what I don’t know could stun a team of oxen in its tracks.”

    You guys are not positioning yourselves very well as a support group.

    posted by Jason on 2-18-2007 at 8:36 pm

  6. Dallas is a great-great uncle/grandfather… something in my family. I’ve always heard that the city of Dallas, TX was named after him. I couldn’t tell you why though.

    posted by Mike on 2-20-2007 at 3:34 pm

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