In 1860, Abraham Lincoln ran for President with the campaign slogan "Vote Yourself a Farm", referring to the Republican party's promise to support legislation granting free homesteads to settlers of the Western frontier. Four years later, during the Civil War, he ran for re-election with the slogan "Don't swap horses in the middle of the stream".

Only two future U.S. Presidents signed the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

William Howard Taft never really wanted to be President. He preferred law to politics and always aspired to serve on the Supreme Court. But his wife -- who wanted to be first lady -- had other ambitions for him. After four uncomfortable years as President, Taft left the White House and became a Professor of Law at Yale. In 1920, Taft finally realized his true dream when President Harding made him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position which he held until just before his death in 1930.

In June 1886, Grover Cleveland took 21-year-old Frances Folsom as his wife, making him the first President to be married in the White House. He was also the first President to have a child born there.

Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird named "Dick" which he kept in the White House study. The bird often rode on Jefferson's shoulder and was trained to take small bites of food held between Jefferson's lips at mealtime!

In 1889, at the age of 24, Warren G. Harding had a nervous breakdown and spent several weeks in a sanitarium.

Unlike the seven men who preceded him in the White House, Martin Van Buren (born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1782) was the first president to be born a citizen of the United States and not a British subject.

"O Captain! My Captain!" was written in 1865 in response to the death of Abraham Lincoln. It was the only one of Whitman's poem to appear in anthologies during his lifetime.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within a few hours of each other on July 4, 1826 and James Monroe died on July 4, 1831.

Presidents rode in stock, unmodified cars until President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration had a state car custom built with armor plating for the doors, bullet-proof tires, inch-thick windows and storage compartments for pistols and sub-machine guns. Initially called "Old 99," in reference to a number on its first license plate, it was later nicknamed the "Sunshine Special."