Presidential Trivia Answers (June 13 & 14)

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(1) QUESTION: Who was the first President born as an American citizen? (His predecessors were all born British subjects.)

ANSWER: Martin Van Buren. He was born in 1782, about a year after the surrender at Yorktown and five days after the preliminary articles of peace were signed with England. The 10th President, John Tyler, was the first to be born after we signed the final Treaty of Paris in 1783.

(2) QUESTION: Which Presidents have memorials on the National Mall in D.C.?

ANSWER: The answer to this question depends on how you define the boundaries of the National Mall. Different people have slightly different ideas about where the mall begins and ends. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and FDR all have monuments and memorials in areas generally accepted to be on the National Mall; the Trust for the National Mall website includes these monuments. Ulysses S. Grant has a monument that is on the east end of the National Mall, just west of the U.S. Capitol. James Garfield also has a monument nearby. Woodrow Wilson’s memorial is close, but surely not on the National Mall by anyone’s definition!

(3) QUESTION: Queen Victoria of England reportedly thought that one of our Presidents was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Which President?

ANSWER: Millard Fillmore. He was presented to her in 1855, shortly after his presidency. But did Queen Victoria really say that? “That statement is disputed,” according to Marie Schnurr, a curator at the Millard Fillmore House Museum, but she also noted that Fillmore “was considered a very handsome man.”