Hours after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service found themselves in a bind. President Franklin D Roosevelt was to give his infamy speech to Congress the next day, and although the trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents weren’t sure how to transport him safely.
The White House did [...]
It’s not unusual for politicians to bend the truth when making accusations about opposing candidates’ records, but what some conservatives accused Bill Clinton of doing during his term in office was far beyond the norm.
Although it’s now largely forgotten, a myriad of dubious allegations faced Clinton during the 1990s, including allegations that he was a [...]
The president who served the shortest period of time after being elected to office was William Henry Harrison. Harrison was president for only 30 days, 12 hours and 32 minutes before keeling over at age 68. The circumstances under which President Harrison, the first ever to die in office, died are disputed until this day.
Harrison [...]
Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States (and only ever to resign), famously came into office promising to end the unpopular war in Vietnam he had inherited from President Johnson. But instead Nixon cranked up the heat in Vietnam, intensifying the conflict and secretly expanding it into Laos and Cambodia.
While Nixon publicly exalted [...]
Long before Ronald Reagan was the governor of California or the 40th president of the United States, he made money posing in cigarette advertisements.
Although his modeling relationship with the tobacco industry dates to at least the 1930s when he was a radio sportscaster, business picked up after he became a well known Hollywood actor, and [...]
For whatever reason, presidents are often known by their middle initial. John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, Harry S. Truman.
Although Truman is commonly referred to with his middle initial (”S”), the 34th president actually didn’t have a middle name– just an initial.
All his life, people were confused about the mysterious “S” that Truman used as [...]
Believe it or not, there was a time when the White House was partially-powered by solar panels! But that didn’t last, as they were taken down only a few years after they were installed (despite being in perfect working order).
During the energy crisis of the late 1970s, then-president Jimmy Carter called on Americans to conserve [...]
