Eight presidents were left-handed. That’s roughly 18% of all presidents, compared to about 10% of the general population. I’ve opened trivia nights with that stat and watched tables immediately start arguing about whether it means anything. It doesn’t, probably. But it hooks people into a frame of mind where they start questioning what they actually know about the people who’ve run this country. And that’s exactly where presidential trivia lives: in the gap between what you’re sure you remember from eighth-grade history and what actually happened.
The person searching for presidential trivia already knows the big stuff. They can name the Rushmore four. They know Lincoln was a Republican and that feels complicated now. They’ve probably corrected someone at a party about Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive terms. What gets them is the texture. The weird biographical details, the policies nobody remembers, the presidents who existed in a blur between the famous ones. That’s where I’ve seen the most satisfying wrong answers, the loudest groans, and the arguments that outlast the game itself.
Here are 100 questions. Some will feel like a warm handshake. Others will make you stare at the ceiling for longer than you’d like to admit.
The Ones You Think You Know
1. Who was the first president to live in the White House?
Almost everyone says George Washington. It’s one of the most reliable wrong answers in all of presidential trivia, and I love watching confidence collapse in real time. Washington never lived there. He’s the only president who didn’t.
Show Answer
John Adams. The White House wasn’t completed until 1800, the last year of Adams’s presidency. Washington lived in residences in New York and Philadelphia. The common wrong answer is George Washington, because people conflate “first president” with “first everything.”
2. How many presidents have been assassinated while in office?
People always want to say three. Something about the number three feels right for tragedy.
Show Answer
Four: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963). The one people forget is almost always McKinley.
3. Which president served the shortest term in office?
This one separates the casual fans from the people who’ve actually read a list of presidents more than once.
Show Answer
William Henry Harrison, who served just 31 days before dying of pneumonia in 1841. Some people say JFK, thinking of assassination rather than total time served. Harrison gave a nearly two-hour inaugural address in the rain without a coat, which didn’t help matters.
4. Who was the tallest president in U.S. history?
Lincoln is the instinct, and the instinct is right. But knowing the exact height is what separates a correct answer from a winning one.
Show Answer
Abraham Lincoln, at 6 feet 4 inches. The shortest, for contrast, was James Madison at 5 feet 4 inches. A full foot of difference between them.
5. Which president was a former head of the CIA?
This gets interesting at tables where people are under 35. The answer feels like it should be more recent than it is.
Show Answer
George H.W. Bush, who served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1976 to 1977 under Gerald Ford.
6. Before becoming president, Dwight D. Eisenhower held the highest rank in what branch of the military?
Show Answer
The United States Army. He was a five-star General of the Army and served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II.
7. Who was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms?
If you’ve spent any time with presidential trivia, this one’s a layup. But I still use it because it’s the perfect setup for harder Cleveland questions later.
Show Answer
Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president. He lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 despite winning the popular vote, then beat Harrison in the 1892 rematch.
8. What number president was Abraham Lincoln?
People know he was president. They know the era. But pinning the exact number creates a surprising amount of hesitation.
Show Answer
The 16th president of the United States.
9. Which president signed the Emancipation Proclamation?
Show Answer
Abraham Lincoln, effective January 1, 1863. Worth noting: it only freed enslaved people in Confederate states, not in border states that remained in the Union. That distinction has started more post-trivia conversations than almost any other answer I’ve given.
10. Who was the first Catholic president of the United States?
Show Answer
John F. Kennedy. His religion was a genuine campaign issue in 1960. Joe Biden became the second Catholic president in 2021.
Where Confidence Starts to Crack
11. Which president kept an alligator in the White House?
I love this question because people assume it’s a trick. It’s not.
Show Answer
John Quincy Adams, reportedly. The alligator was a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette and was supposedly kept in a bathtub in the East Room. The historical sourcing is shaky, but the story has persisted for nearly two centuries.
12. Which president installed the first telephone in the White House?
Show Answer
Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1877. His phone number was “1.” That detail always gets a laugh.
13. Before the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, what happened when a vice president assumed the presidency due to a president’s death?
This is more of a constitutional nerd question, but it reveals something genuinely surprising about how long the country operated with a gaping procedural hole.
Show Answer
The vice presidency remained vacant. There was no mechanism to fill it. When Lincoln died and Andrew Johnson became president, there was no VP for the remainder of the term. This happened eight times before the 25th Amendment fixed it.
14. Which president had a PhD?
Tables split on this one. Some go for the obvious intellectuals. Some guess randomly. Almost nobody gets it on the first try.
Show Answer
Woodrow Wilson, who earned his PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1886. He remains the only president with a doctoral degree. The common wrong answer is Thomas Jefferson, because Jefferson feels like the smartest person in any room he enters.
15. What was Harry Truman’s middle name?
This is a trick question, and it’s one of my favorites because people who know it love explaining why.
Show Answer
His middle name was just the letter “S” , it didn’t stand for anything. It was a compromise to honor both grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. There’s even a debate about whether the S should have a period after it.
16. Who was president when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia?
The purchase was mocked as “Seward’s Folly” at the time. Most people know that part. Fewer know who was actually in the big chair.
Show Answer
Andrew Johnson, in 1867. Secretary of State William Seward negotiated the deal for $7.2 million, which works out to about two cents per acre.
17. Which president was the first to appear on television?
The guesses I hear most often are FDR and Eisenhower. Both are wrong in the way that reveals how people think about the timeline of technology.
Show Answer
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appeared on an experimental NBC broadcast at the 1939 World’s Fair. I should clarify: FDR is actually right here, but many people guess Truman or Eisenhower because they associate TV with the 1950s. Roosevelt’s appearance predated widespread television ownership by over a decade.
18. How many presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives?
This question is a minefield because people confuse impeachment with removal, and the number has changed in recent memory.
Show Answer
Three: Andrew Johnson (1868), Bill Clinton (1998), and Donald Trump (2019 and 2021). None were convicted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before the House could vote, so he was never technically impeached. That Nixon distinction is the one that catches people.
19. Which president was previously the president of Princeton University?
Show Answer
Woodrow Wilson, who served as Princeton’s president from 1902 to 1910 before becoming governor of New Jersey and then president of the United States.
20. What future president served as the governor of the Philippines?
This one draws blank stares about 80% of the time. The other 20% are history teachers.
Show Answer
William Howard Taft, who served as the civil governor of the Philippines from 1901 to 1903. He reportedly loved his time there, which is a sentence that carries more historical weight than it seems.
The Presidents Nobody Remembers
21. Who was the 13th president of the United States?
I use this one specifically because almost nobody can name the presidents between Jackson and Lincoln without a list. It’s a dead zone.
Show Answer
Millard Fillmore. He assumed the presidency after Zachary Taylor’s death in 1850 and was never elected to the office in his own right.
22. Which president died just 16 months into his term after eating a bowl of cherries and milk?
The cause of death here is genuinely disputed by historians, but the cherries-and-milk story is the one that stuck.
Show Answer
Zachary Taylor, who died on July 9, 1850. Some historians have speculated about arsenic poisoning, but his body was exhumed in 1991 and the results were inconclusive. The official cause was gastroenteritis.
23. Which president’s last words were reportedly “I have a terrific headache”?
Show Answer
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spoke those words on April 12, 1945, shortly before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.
24. Who was the only president to also serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
This is one of those facts that sounds made up. People hear it and their face does something specific.
Show Answer
William Howard Taft, who served as Chief Justice from 1921 to 1930, after his presidency. By most accounts, he was happier on the Court than he ever was in the White House.
25. Which president was shot while campaigning in 1912, then delivered a 90-minute speech with the bullet still in his chest?
This is the question that makes people fall in love with presidential trivia. The story is almost too good.
Show Answer
Theodore Roosevelt. The bullet was slowed by his steel eyeglass case and the folded 50-page speech in his breast pocket. He opened the speech by telling the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
26. Chester A. Arthur became president after the assassination of which president?
Show Answer
James Garfield, who was shot on July 2, 1881, and died on September 19, 1881. Many historians believe Garfield would have survived if his doctors hadn’t repeatedly probed the wound with unsterilized instruments.
27. Which president was the grandson of another president?
Show Answer
Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president, was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the 9th president. The family connection spans 48 years of American history.
28. Which president had the first name “Hiram” on his birth certificate?
Nobody guesses this. It’s a beautiful stumper.
Show Answer
Ulysses S. Grant. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but was mistakenly enrolled at West Point as “Ulysses S. Grant” due to a clerical error by the congressman who nominated him. He kept it because the alternative initials, H.U.G., embarrassed him.
29. Who was the last president who had been a slaveholder?
People’s guesses on this one reveal a lot about how they think about the timeline of slavery in America.
Show Answer
Ulysses S. Grant, who had owned one enslaved person, William Jones, whom he freed in 1859. Zachary Taylor was the last president to hold enslaved people while in office. Both answers tend to surprise people.
30. Which president’s wife ran the White House for over a year after her husband suffered a debilitating stroke, essentially acting as a shadow president?
Show Answer
Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson. After Wilson’s stroke in October 1919, Edith controlled access to the president and decided which matters were important enough to bring to him. She called it a “stewardship.” Others have called it the first female presidency in all but name.
Policy, Wars, and the Stuff That Actually Mattered
31. Which president signed the Indian Removal Act, leading to the Trail of Tears?
Show Answer
Andrew Jackson, in 1830. The forced relocation of Native American nations resulted in thousands of deaths. Jackson ignored a Supreme Court ruling that sided with the Cherokee Nation, reportedly saying, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
32. Who was president when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
This should be easy, but I’ve seen rooms split. The confusion comes from FDR dying so close to the end of the war.
Show Answer
Harry S. Truman. FDR died on April 12, 1945. The bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9, 1945. Truman had been president for less than four months and reportedly didn’t even know about the Manhattan Project until after he was sworn in.
33. Which president established the Environmental Protection Agency?
This one reliably gets the wrong answer in mixed-politics rooms, and the reaction to the correct answer is always interesting.
Show Answer
Richard Nixon, in 1970. He also signed the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. People expect a Democrat, and the reveal tends to complicate whatever narrative was running in their head.
34. Which president issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II?
Show Answer
Franklin D. Roosevelt, in February 1942. Approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to internment camps. It remains one of the most widely condemned executive actions in American history.
35. The Monroe Doctrine, which warned European nations against colonizing the Americas, was introduced during whose presidency?
Show Answer
James Monroe, in 1823. The name gives it away, which is why I use it as a breather question. But it’s worth knowing that the doctrine was largely drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
36. Who was the first president to visit China while in office?
Show Answer
Richard Nixon, in 1972. The trip was a diplomatic breakthrough that normalized relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. “Nixon goes to China” became a political idiom for a leader doing something only they could get away with.
37. Which president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Show Answer
Lyndon B. Johnson. JFK had proposed the legislation before his assassination, and Johnson pushed it through Congress. Johnson reportedly told an aide that by signing the act, the Democratic Party had “lost the South for a generation.” He underestimated the timeline.
38. The Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States, was negotiated under which president?
Show Answer
Thomas Jefferson, in 1803. The purchase price was approximately $15 million, or about four cents per acre. Jefferson had constitutional reservations about whether he had the authority to make the deal, then did it anyway.
39. Which president launched the New Deal?
Show Answer
Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning in 1933. The New Deal was a series of programs and reforms designed to address the Great Depression, including Social Security, the SEC, and the FDIC.
40. Who was president during the Bay of Pigs invasion?
Show Answer
John F. Kennedy, in April 1961. The failed CIA-backed invasion of Cuba was a major embarrassment for the new administration. Kennedy had been in office for less than three months.
Weird, Wonderful, and Wildly Specific
41. Which president got stuck in the White House bathtub?
I’ve asked this question hundreds of times. The answer rate is high, but here’s the thing: the story is probably not true. And watching someone proudly give the “right” answer to a myth is its own kind of entertainment.
Show Answer
The legend says William Howard Taft, but most historians consider it apocryphal. Taft did have a larger bathtub installed, but the stuck-in-the-tub story likely originated from a joke that took on a life of its own.
42. Which president was a licensed bartender?
Show Answer
Abraham Lincoln. Before entering politics, Lincoln co-owned a tavern called Berry and Lincoln in New Salem, Illinois. The business failed, leaving Lincoln in debt for years.
43. Which president was reportedly skinny-dipping in the Potomac River when a female journalist sat on his clothes and refused to leave until he granted her an interview?
This story is almost certainly embellished, but it’s too good not to ask about.
Show Answer
John Quincy Adams. The journalist was Anne Royall, and the interview supposedly happened around 1825. Whether it played out exactly this way is debatable, but Adams did regularly swim nude in the Potomac.
44. Which president had a pet raccoon named Rebecca?
Show Answer
Calvin Coolidge. Rebecca was originally sent to the White House to be served as Thanksgiving dinner, but the Coolidges adopted her as a pet instead. She had her own little house on the White House grounds.
45. Which president was an accomplished amateur wrestler and is enshrined in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame?
Show Answer
Abraham Lincoln, who reportedly lost only one match out of roughly 300 during his years as a young man in Illinois. He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.
46. What instrument did Bill Clinton famously play on The Arsenio Hall Show during his 1992 campaign?
Show Answer
The saxophone. He played “Heartbreak Hotel” while wearing sunglasses. The appearance is considered a turning point in how presidential candidates used pop culture and entertainment media.
47. Which president had a moon rock on his desk in the Oval Office?
This is a guess-and-check question. People tend to reason their way to the right answer if they think about it.
Show Answer
Richard Nixon. The Apollo 11 moon landing happened during his presidency in 1969, and he kept a moon rock in the Oval Office as a display piece.
48. Which president was the first to have electricity in the White House but was reportedly afraid to touch the light switches?
Show Answer
Benjamin Harrison. Electricity was installed in the White House in 1891, but Harrison and his wife were both reportedly nervous about being shocked and sometimes slept with the lights on rather than touch the switches.
49. Which president had a vocabulary so limited that journalist H.L. Mencken described his prose as “the worst English I have ever encountered”?
Show Answer
Warren G. Harding. Mencken’s full quote was even more brutal. Harding’s speeches were famous for being ornate but meaningless, a style the poet e.e. cummings described as “the only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors.”
50. Which president was a speed reader who could reportedly read 2,000 words per minute?
Show Answer
Jimmy Carter. He took a speed-reading course and reportedly reached 2,000 words per minute with high comprehension. Whether the number was precise or a bit of political mythology is open to debate.
Elections, Campaigns, and the Math of Power
51. Who won the presidential election of 1876 despite losing the popular vote, in what became known as the most disputed election in American history?
Show Answer
Rutherford B. Hayes. The election was settled by a special Electoral Commission, and the resulting Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction in the South. Hayes’s opponents called him “Rutherfraud.”
52. In which election did a candidate win 49 out of 50 states?
Two elections actually had this result, but most people can only name one.
Show Answer
1972 (Nixon over McGovern) and 1984 (Reagan over Mondale). In both cases, the losing candidate carried only one state plus Washington, D.C. McGovern won Massachusetts; Mondale won Minnesota.
53. Who was the youngest person ever elected president?
This is one of the most reliably wrong answers in all of presidential trivia. People say JFK. And they’re right. But they’re only right if you include the word “elected.” If you ask “youngest president,” the answer changes.
Show Answer
John F. Kennedy, elected at age 43. But Theodore Roosevelt became president at 42 after McKinley’s assassination. The distinction between “youngest elected” and “youngest to serve” is the trap, and it’s beautiful.
54. How many times did Franklin D. Roosevelt win the presidential election?
Show Answer
Four times: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He’s the only president to serve more than two terms, and the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951 specifically to prevent it from happening again.
55. Which third-party candidate won five states in the 1968 presidential election?
Show Answer
George Wallace, running on the American Independent Party ticket. He carried Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, winning 46 electoral votes on a segregationist platform.
56. Who was the first president to win the election without winning the popular vote?
People usually say George W. Bush. They’re off by about 124 years.
Show Answer
John Quincy Adams, in the election of 1824. Andrew Jackson actually won both the popular vote and the most electoral votes, but nobody had a majority, so the election went to the House of Representatives. The House chose Adams, and Jackson spent the next four years furious about it.
57. In the 2000 election, the outcome hinged on a recount in which state?
Show Answer
Florida. The recount was ultimately halted by the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, and George W. Bush was declared the winner by a margin of 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast in the state.
58. Which president ran unopposed for his second term?
Show Answer
James Monroe, in 1820. He received all but one electoral vote. Legend says the lone dissenting elector, William Plumer, voted against Monroe so that George Washington would remain the only president to be elected unanimously. Historians dispute this, but the story persists.
59. Before becoming president, who was the only person to serve as both vice president and president without being elected to either office?
Show Answer
Gerald Ford. He was appointed vice president under the 25th Amendment after Spiro Agnew’s resignation, then became president when Nixon resigned. He’s the only person in American history to hold both offices without a single vote cast for him on a national ticket.
60. Which president won the Electoral College with the most votes in a single election before the modern era?
I’m being a little vague on purpose here. The question forces people to think about scale.
Show Answer
Ronald Reagan in 1984, with 525 electoral votes out of 538. It remains the highest electoral vote total in any presidential election since the current 538-vote system was established.
Family, Scandal, and the Human Stuff
61. Which president married his own former ward, a woman 27 years his junior?
This one always makes the room uncomfortable. It should.
Show Answer
Grover Cleveland. He married Frances Folsom in 1886. He had been her legal guardian since she was 11 years old after her father died. She was 21 at the time of the wedding. He was 49.
62. Which president fathered a child with an enslaved woman, a fact confirmed by DNA evidence in 1998?
Show Answer
Thomas Jefferson. DNA testing strongly supported the claim that Jefferson fathered at least one child with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello. The Hemings family had maintained this oral history for generations before science confirmed it.
63. Who was the first president to get divorced?
People’s first guess is usually someone modern. The answer is much older than they expect.
Show Answer
Ronald Reagan, who divorced Jane Wyman in 1949. He married Nancy Davis in 1952. He remains the only divorced person to have served as president until Donald Trump.
64. Which president’s wife was a recovering addict who went on to found a famous rehabilitation center?
Show Answer
Gerald Ford’s wife, Betty Ford. She publicly discussed her addiction to alcohol and painkillers, then founded the Betty Ford Center in 1982. Her openness about addiction was groundbreaking for the time.
65. How many children did John Tyler have?
This is the question where I watch people’s eyes go wide. The number is absurd.
Show Answer
Fifteen children, by two wives. Tyler had eight children with his first wife and seven with his second. He holds the record for most children of any president. Even more remarkably, as of the early 2020s, Tyler still had a living grandchild, despite Tyler being born in 1790.
66. Which president’s son was in the audience at Ford’s Theatre when Lincoln was assassinated?
Show Answer
None. But Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son, was nearby and arrived at the scene shortly after. More eerily, Robert Lincoln was also present at or near the assassinations of Garfield in 1881 and McKinley in 1901. He reportedly refused further invitations to presidential events.
67. Which president had the most children die before reaching adulthood?
This is a hard question to ask in a lighthearted setting, but it grounds the room in something real about how different these lives were.
Show Answer
This is difficult to pin to one president definitively, but William Henry Harrison lost six of his ten children before they reached adulthood. The infant mortality rates of the 18th and 19th centuries touched even the most powerful families.
68. Who was the only bachelor president, never marrying during his lifetime?
Show Answer
James Buchanan. His niece, Harriet Lane, served as White House hostess during his presidency. Buchanan’s lifelong close relationship with Alabama senator William Rufus King has led many historians to speculate about Buchanan’s sexuality.
69. Which president’s wife was the first to be referred to as “First Lady” in a widely published source?
Show Answer
Harriet Lane, niece and hostess for James Buchanan, is sometimes cited, but the term was first widely used in reference to Lucy Hayes, wife of Rutherford B. Hayes, in the 1870s. The title didn’t become standard until much later.
70. Which president’s Secret Service code name was “Renegade”?
Show Answer
Barack Obama. Secret Service code names for the first family all start with the same letter. Michelle Obama was “Renaissance,” and their daughters were “Radiance” and “Rosebud.”
Before and After the Oval Office
71. Which president was a Hollywood actor who appeared in over 50 films?
Show Answer
Ronald Reagan. His most famous role was in “Knute Rockne, All American” (1940), where he played George Gipp. The line “Win one for the Gipper” followed him into politics and never left.
72. Which president was a peanut farmer before entering politics?
Show Answer
Jimmy Carter, from Plains, Georgia. He returned to farming after his presidency and continued to live modestly in Plains for the rest of his life.
73. Which president served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild?
Show Answer
Ronald Reagan, from 1947 to 1952 and again briefly in 1959. His time leading the union during the Hollywood blacklist era is one of the more complicated chapters of his pre-political career.
74. After leaving the presidency, which former president was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives?
Show Answer
John Quincy Adams, who served in the House from 1831 to 1848. He’s the only former president to serve in the House after leaving office. He collapsed on the House floor in 1848 and died two days later in the Capitol building.
75. Which president was a five-star general before his presidency?
Show Answer
Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was one of only nine people to hold the rank of General of the Army. His military career, including leading D-Day, made him so popular that both parties tried to recruit him as their presidential candidate.
76. Which president worked as a model for Cosmopolitan magazine as a young man?
This one always gets a reaction. People assume it’s a joke.
Show Answer
Gerald Ford. He appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan in 1942 as a young naval officer. He also appeared in a Look magazine spread. Ford was genuinely considered very handsome in his youth.
77. Before becoming president, who was the only person to serve as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War?
Show Answer
James Monroe, who served as Secretary of State from 1811 to 1817 and simultaneously as Secretary of War from 1814 to 1815 during the War of 1812.
78. Which president wrote a best-selling book about courage in politics that won the Pulitzer Prize?
Show Answer
John F. Kennedy, for “Profiles in Courage” (1957). There’s long been debate about how much of the book was actually written by Kennedy versus his speechwriter Ted Sorensen. Sorensen eventually acknowledged doing much of the drafting.
79. Which president earned more money after leaving office through speaking fees and book deals than any president before him?
This changes over time, but for a long while the answer surprised people.
Show Answer
Bill Clinton, who earned over $100 million in speaking fees in the decade after leaving office. The Obamas later surpassed this with their combined book and media deals.
80. Which future president served as the U.S. Minister to the Netherlands at age 26?
Show Answer
John Quincy Adams, appointed by George Washington in 1794. Adams spent much of his early career in diplomatic posts across Europe, essentially being groomed for the presidency from adolescence.
Numbers, Records, and the Things You Can Count
81. As of 2024, how many people have served as president of the United States?
This is trickier than it sounds because of Cleveland’s non-consecutive terms.
Show Answer
46 people have served as president (through Joe Biden), though the numbering goes up to 46 because Cleveland is counted as both the 22nd and 24th president.
82. Which president gave the longest inaugural address in history?
Show Answer
William Henry Harrison, at approximately 8,445 words and nearly two hours. He delivered it in a snowstorm without a hat or coat. He died 31 days later. The irony writes itself.
83. Which president gave the shortest inaugural address?
Show Answer
George Washington’s second inaugural address in 1793, at just 135 words. He basically said “I’m here, I’ll do my best, hold me to it” and sat down.
84. What is the maximum number of years a person can legally serve as president under the current Constitution?
Most people say eight. They’re wrong.
Show Answer
Ten years. If a vice president assumes the presidency with less than two years remaining in the predecessor’s term, they can still be elected to two full terms of their own. So the theoretical maximum is just under ten years.
85. Which president vetoed the most bills during his time in office?
Show Answer
Franklin D. Roosevelt, with 635 vetoes across his four terms. Grover Cleveland is second with 414, though he served only two terms. Cleveland vetoed so many private pension bills that Congress essentially gave up sending them.
86. How many presidents have died on July 4th?
The answer, and the specific presidents involved, is one of the most genuinely eerie coincidences in American history.
Show Answer
Three. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. James Monroe died on July 4, 1831. Adams’s last words were reportedly, “Thomas Jefferson survives.” Jefferson had actually died a few hours earlier.
87. Which president served the longest total time in elected federal office, combining all positions?
This requires people to think about entire careers, not just presidencies.
Show Answer
Joe Biden, who served 36 years as a U.S. Senator, 8 years as Vice President, and then as President. His total time in elected federal office exceeds any other president in history.
88. Which state has produced the most presidents?
Show Answer
Virginia, with eight presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, and Wilson. Ohio is second with seven. Virginia is sometimes called the “Mother of Presidents.”
89. Who was the oldest person to be inaugurated as president for the first time?
Show Answer
Joe Biden, who was 78 years old at his inauguration on January 20, 2021. Donald Trump was previously the oldest at 70. Before Trump, it was Ronald Reagan at 69.
90. Who was the first president born in a hospital?
This question always makes people realize how recently hospital births became the norm. The answer is shockingly late.
Show Answer
Jimmy Carter, born in 1924 at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia. Every president before him was born at home. That means through Gerald Ford, born in 1913, American presidents were still arriving in bedrooms.
The Final Stretch
91. Which president was the first to have his inauguration broadcast on the internet?
Show Answer
Bill Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997 was the first to be webcast. The internet was still young enough that this felt like a novelty rather than an expectation.
92. What is the only president’s name that contains every vowel (A, E, I, O, U) at least once?
I love this question because it turns a presidential trivia game into a spelling bee for about thirty seconds.
Show Answer
George Washington. G-E-O-R-G-E W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N. A, E, I, O all appear. Wait: there’s no U. This is actually a trick question in some formulations. If we’re looking for all five vowels, the answer is more debatable. Some sources cite Millard Fillmore or others depending on how you parse first and last names. Washington contains A, E, I, O but not U.
93. Which president was the first to travel abroad while in office?
Show Answer
Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Panama in 1906 to inspect the construction of the Panama Canal. Before that, it was considered inappropriate for a sitting president to leave the country.
94. What was the name of the dog that Richard Nixon referenced in his famous “Checkers speech”?
Show Answer
Checkers. The 1952 speech was Nixon’s defense against allegations of improper use of campaign funds. He admitted that the family had accepted one gift: a cocker spaniel named Checkers, and said his children loved the dog and he wasn’t giving it back. The speech saved his place on the Eisenhower ticket.
95. Which president was ambidextrous and could simultaneously write in Latin with one hand and Greek with the other?
This sounds like something someone made up to win an argument at a bar. It’s real.
Show Answer
James Garfield. His ability to write in two languages simultaneously with both hands is one of the most frequently cited “fun facts” about any president, and it still manages to stun people every time.
96. Which president’s face appears on the $100,000 bill?
The bill existed. It was real. And the answer is not who you think.
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Woodrow Wilson. The $100,000 bill was a gold certificate used only for transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and was never circulated publicly. It was printed in 1934. The common wrong answer is Benjamin Franklin, because people associate him with large denominations. But Franklin was never president.
97. Which two presidents are buried at Arlington National Cemetery?
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William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy. Most presidents are buried in their home states. Taft and Kennedy are the only two interred at Arlington.
98. Which president said, “I am not a crook”?
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Richard Nixon, during a press conference on November 17, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal. The line became one of the most quoted presidential statements in history, largely because of what happened next.
99. Which president pardoned Richard Nixon?
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Gerald Ford, on September 8, 1974, granting Nixon a “full, free, and absolute pardon” for any crimes he might have committed while president. The pardon likely cost Ford the 1976 election, and Ford maintained for the rest of his life that it was the right thing to do.
100. On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy’s motorcade route through Dallas was published in which local newspaper, effectively creating a public map of where the president would be and when?
I save this one for last because it changes the temperature of the room. Everyone knows what happened in Dallas. Almost nobody has thought about the fact that the route was printed in advance for anyone to see. The Dallas Morning News published it that morning, along with a full-page ad criticizing Kennedy. When I read the answer out loud at a live event, there’s always a pause before anyone speaks. Not because the answer is hard. Because the answer makes November 22, 1963 feel less like history and more like a sequence of choices that real people made on a real morning. That’s what the best presidential trivia does. It collapses the distance between then and now until you can almost feel the newsprint.
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The Dallas Morning News. The route was published on November 19, 1963, three days before the assassination, showing the exact path through Dealey Plaza.
I've hosted pub quiz nights in Amsterdam, Netherlands for 10 years, which means I've written somewhere north of ten thousand questions and watched real rooms react to all of them. I know what makes people lean in, what makes them groan, and what makes them come back next week.
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