Presidential Trivia Answers

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(1) QUESTION: Which U.S. President had a gang named after him on the long-running sitcom Seinfeld?

ANSWER: Martin Van Buren. The Van Buren Boys had their own sign: Cross the hands with 8 fingers in the air (because Van Buren was the 8th President). Kramer runs into the gang in a dark alley and saves himself when he accidentally flashes their sign.

(2) QUESTION: First Lady Betty Ford once made an appearance on a television sitcom. Which one?

ANSWER: The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Betty Ford played herself. Almost a decade later, she and President Ford appeared on the primetime soap opera Dynasty. According to Entertainment Weekly, the cameo happened by chance. Dynasty intended to film its characters mingling with a real crowd at an annual charity event in Denver, but it just so happened that the former President and his wife were in attendance. Dynasty’s producer arranged the scene on the spot.

(3) QUESTION: Who was the first President to appear on television? What was he doing? Who was the first President to appear on color TV?

ANSWER: Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first sitting President to appear on TV. He was at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. The appearance would have been broadcast on a relatively small number of TVs in the New York area. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first President to appear on color TV. Apparently, Eisenhower holds two firsts in this regard: In 1955, he was broadcast in color giving an address at West Point. In 1958, he was the first President to appear in a color video tape recording. For this latter event, he was speaking at the opening ceremony for NBC’s studio in Washington, D.C. According to Internet Archive: “The program starts in black and white, showing President Eisenhower arriving outside the WRC studios. Later inside, Robert Sarnoff, president of NBC, pushes a button signifying the inauguration of the WRCA new color studios. As he pushed the button, the color encoder switches from a mono picture to color.” See the attached picture for screenshots from the program.