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CAT Tracks for February 21, 2011
VALERIE STRAUSS...PRESIDENTS' DAY |
Couple of columns "on point" for your extra day of rest...
From the Washington Post...
The Answer Sheet
Who does Presidents' Day really honor?
Ask half a dozen people who Presidents' Day is meant to honor, and you may get half a dozen different answers. There isn't even universal agreement on whether there is an apostrophe in "presidents."
To the U.S. government, Presidents' Day is still recognized as “Washington’s Birthday." On the government website’s list of official holidays, sandwiched between Valentine’s Day and Easter, it says:
Washington’s Birthday is a federal holiday observed the third Monday of February to honor George Washington, the first President of the United States. This date is commonly called Presidents’ Day and many groups honor the legacy of past presidents on this date.
In fact in some states the day jointly honors the birthdays of Washington, born Feb. 22, and Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday is Feb. 12. But in others the day is meant to honor Washington and Thomas Jefferson but not Lincoln, or all of the presidents.
Here’s a brief history of the day:
--Feb. 22, Washington’s actual birthday, became a U.S. government holiday in 1885.
--In the early 1950s, there was a movement led by a coalition of travel organizations to create three-day weekends by moving the celebration of some holidays to Mondays.
One of the suggestions was to create a Presidents’ Day between Washington’s and Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday. Lincoln’s was a holiday in some states but was never made a federal holiday though it was a holiday in some states. A few states tried the new arrangement but it was not universally adopted across the country. Also in the early 1950s, there was a proposal to make March 4 -- the original presidential inauguration day -- a day to honor all presidents.
--In 1971, some holidays moved to Mondays under a U.S. law that created three-day weekends for federal employees. States, however, were not required to honor them.
Today, there is no unanimous name for this holiday, always on the third Monday in February.
And even when it is called Presidents’ Day, sometimes the apostrophe is missing, sometimes it is between the last two letters, and sometimes (as used here) after the last letter.
In Virginia, the first president’s home state, the holiday is called George Washington’s Day. Not in Alabama. There it is “Washington and Jefferson Day," in honor of George and Thomas Jefferson, even though he was born on April 13. Lincoln isn’t mentioned.
The Answer Sheet
A Presidents' Day quiz
Here are a dozen questions to test your presidential knowledge on this Presidents' Day, with answers and explanations below.
1. How many presidents have served the United States?
2. Who was the oldest President?
3) Who was the youngest President?
4) What is the president’s annual salary?
5) What was the salary of the first president, George Washington?
6) What is the birth state of the most presidents?
7) How many presidents died in office (by assassination or natural causes)?
8) How many former presidents are still living?
9) Who was the first President to live in the current White House?
10) Which president had a pet cow named Pauline Wayne who lived on the White House lawn?
11) Who was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms?
12) Who was the first president born in a hospital?
Answers:
1) a. 44, but 43 men have served. Grover Cleveland is counted twice because he was the 22nd president, 1885-1889, and the 24th president, 1893-1897.
By Valerie Strauss
By Valerie Strauss
a) 42
b) 44
c) 45
d) 49
a) George Herbert Walker Bush
b) John Adams
c) Harry Truman
d) Ronald Reagan
a) Theodore Roosevelt
b) George W. Bush
c) John F. Kennedy
d) Bill Clinton
a) $200,000
b) $250,000
c) $400,000
d) $500,000
a) $10,000
b) $18,000
c) $22,000
d) $25,000
a) Virginia
b) Massachusetts
c) New York
d) Illinois
a) 4
b) 6
c) 8
d) 9
a) 2
b) 3
c) 4
d) 5
a) George Washington
b) John Adams
c) Thomas Jefferson
d) James Madison
a) Thomas Jefferson
b) Abraham Lincoln
c) William Taft
d) Theodore Roosevelt
a) John Quincy Adams
b) Theodore Roosevelt
c) Grover Cleveland
d) Abraham Lincoln
a) George Washington
b) Jimmy Carter
d) John Quincy Adams
c) Theodore Roosevelt
2) d. Ronald Reagan, who nearly 70 when he took office.
3) a. Theodore Roosevelt, was only 42 when he assumed office after his predecessor died. Kennedy was 43, the youngest to be elected president. Clinton was elected at 46.
4) c. $400,000. In 2001 the president’s salary was doubled from $200,000 to $400,000. It was the fifth time the salary had been raised.
5) d. $25,000. George Washington, already a wealthy man, declined his salary.
6) a. Virginia
7) c. 8. Four were assassinated: Lincoln, Kennedy, Garfield, and McKinley. Four died of natural causes: Harrison of pneumonia, Taylor of acute indigestion, Harding of a heart attack, and Roosevelt from a cerebral hemorrhage.
8) c. 4. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter.
9) b. John Adams. He and his wife, Abigail, moved into the White House in 1800.
10) c. Taft kept pet Holstein cows.
11) c. Cleveland was the country’s 22nd and 24th president.
12) b. Carter, the 39th president, was born in a hospital in Plains, Ga. on October 1, 1924, the first president born in a hospital.
