Eisenhower didn’t know how to make a phone call. When he was young you picked up the phone and told the operator who you wanted. When dial phones came in, he was a busy man with secretaries and assistants, he would just say, “get So-n-so on the phone.” and the person would be there when he picked up the receiver. Shortly after he was president he was alone in a room and wanted to make a call, he had to get someone to show him how to dial a phone.

really trivial,

When Washington was a surveyor, his group surveyed the creek and its tributaries near my home. I live on a tributary, so there’s a chance that George Washington walked through my back yard, about 200 years before it was a “back yard”. (ha-ha)

Calvin Coolidge used to have a mechanical horse and saddle that he loved to ride, especially during his cabinet meetings! Apparently, his cabinet memebers reported that he would whoop and holler while throwing his hand in the air like a real rodeo rider. Coolidge also had a mouldy cowboy hat that he was *had* to wear in order to ride the mechanical horse!

Maybe everybody already knows this one, but when Richard Nixon was young he suffered a deep cut to his head from a wagon wheel, which is why he always parted his hair on the same side in an attempt to cover it.

Grant, while buried you know where, died in Wilton, NY, just north of Saratoga. Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, told Grant he had to provide for hie family after his death. Grant was dying of throat cancer. He settled into a cottage on a hillside to write his memoirs in the hopes they would be sold after his death. The cottage is not only a National landmark but is located on the grounds of a state prison. One must pass through a checkpoint to get there.

One of most obscure presidents in our history, 21st President Chester A. Arthur, actually has an information society named after him that specializes in obscure political trivia questions — located in New South Wales, Australia — the Chester A. Arthur Society.

At Andrew Jackson’s funeral in 1845, his pet parrot Poll had to be removed for swearing.

Teddy Roosevelt’s “Point-to-Point” marches where he would walk over, under, or through whatever was in his way, including arriving at a Predidential appointment having emerged from a pond covered neck-to-toe in the shiny oil used to keep the ducks away.