Presidential Trivia Answers (Dec. 27 & 28)

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(1) QUESTION: Which President received a big block of cheese on New Year’s Day to celebrate his inauguration a year earlier?

ANSWER: Thomas Jefferson. He was the first was the first to be inaugurated at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. One town in Massachusetts was thrilled and they created a huge block of cheese to celebrate. They spent the greater part of a year creating the cheese, and they finally delivered it to Jefferson on New Year’s Day, 1802.My story on that cheese appears here.

The Great Cheese Levee, from Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis, by Benjamin Perley Poore

(2) QUESTION: Which President signed a landmark document on New Year’s Day? Bonus points if you know what the document was.

ANSWER: Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day, 1863.

(3) QUESTION: Which President set a record for most handshakes by a head of state? (Hint: He did it at a New Year’s reception.)

ANSWER: Theodore Roosevelt (1907). The Guiness Book of World Records explains that he “set a record for a head of state by shaking hands with 8,513 people at an official function at a New Year’s Day White House presentation . . . .”