U.S Presidential Trivia

After a brutal primary and campaign season, you may know more about John McCain, Barack Obama and their running mates than you ever wished to have revealed.

But what about some little-known facts about the men who preceded this year’s candidates to the White House? Some presidential trivia is amusing, and some is just downright weird.

Encarta put together a list of “20 Things You Didn’t Know about U.S. Presidents“:

Here’s a sampling:

– In warm weather, 6th president of the United States John Quincy Adams customarily went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River before dawn.

– 9th U.S. president William Henry Harrison was inaugurated on a bitterly cold day and gave the longest inauguration speech ever. The new president promptly caught a cold that soon developed into pneumonia. Harrison died exactly one month into his presidential term, the shortest in U.S. history.

– John Tyler, 10th U.S. president, fathered 15 children (more than any other president)–8 by his first wife, and 7 by his second wife. Tyler was past his seventieth birthday when his 15th child was born.

– Sedated only by brandy, 11th president of the United States James Polk survived gall bladder surgery at the age of 17.

– Often depicted wearing a tall black stovepipe hat, 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln carried letters, bills, and notes in his hat.

– 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson never attended school. His future wife, Eliza McCardle, taught him to write at the age of 17.

Check out more presidential trivia at Encarta