With the USA electing its 45th President, test your US election knowledge with our quiz.
Q1. Only 1 US President has been elected President 4 times. Who was it and which Amendment to the US Constitution was introduced soon after he ceased holding office?
1. George Washington
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Franklin D Roosevelt
4. Ulysses S Grant
Q2. Who was the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms?
1. Woodrow Wilson
2. John Quincy Adams
3. Theodore Roosevelt
4. Grover Cleveland
Q3. Who was the oldest elected President?
1. Dwight D Eisenhower
2. Franklin D Roosevelt
3. Ronald Reagan
4. Donald Trump
Q4. Under which President was the White House officially called the White House?
1. John Adams
2. Andrew Jackson
3. Theodore Roosevelt
4. Woodrow Wilson
Q5. Who was the first President to live in the White House (or ‘The President’s House’)?
1. George Washington
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. John Adams
4. Andrew Jackson
Q6. Which US President appointed the first African American to their cabinet?
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. John F Kennedy
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
4. Richard Nixon
Q7. Who was the first US President born in a hospital?
1. President Jimmy Carter (born 1924)
2. President Richard Nixon (born 1913)
3. President Ronald Reagan (born 1911)
4. President Gerald Ford (born 1913)
Q8. Name as many US Presidents as you can who were directly related to each other.
Q9. Name the US President who failed as a business man, storekeeper, and farmer. He also failed in his bid to be Speaker, his first attempt to enter Congress, when he ran for the United States Senate and when he sought the nomination for the Vice Presidency. Who was this Presidential ‘failure’?
Q10. How many US Presidents have died in office? Name as many as you can.
Q11. Who was the first President to be impeached?
1. Richard Nixon
2. Andrew Johnson
3. Bill Clinton
4. Calvin Coolidge
Q12. Who was the first President to win the Nobel Peace Prize?
1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. Woodrow Wilson
3. Barack Obama
4. Jimmy Carter
Scroll down for the answers to the quiz…
Q1. Only 1 US President has been elected President 4 times. Who was it and which Amendment to the US Constitution did this lead to?
Answer – 3. Franklin D Roosevelt (elected 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944)
Franklin D Roosevelt is the only American president to be elected four times. After his service, the 22nd Amendment ratified in 1951, limited the presidential office to two terms. They chose 2 terms as this was the number of terms adhered to by early Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson.
Q2. Who was the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms?
Answer – 4. Grover Cleveland (elected 1884, 1892)
Grover Cleveland (a Democrat) served two terms in so he counted as both the 22nd and 24th President of the USA. His served his first term 1885-1889 and his second term 1893–1897, with President Benjamin Harrison (Republican) serving in between 1989-1893.
Q3. Who was the oldest elected President?
Answer – Well it was 3. Ronald Reagan (elected 1980, 1984) until 2016 when it became 4. Donald Trump (elected 2016)
The 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was the oldest match-up of candidates ever. If Trump had been elected, is now the oldest ever elected President aged 70. On inauguration day in January 2017, he will be 70 years, 7 months and 7 days.
If Hillary Clinton had been elected, she would have been the second oldest elected President behind President Reagan.
In 1981, ex movie star Ronald Reagan assumed office aged 69 years, 349 days.
Q4. Under which President was the White House officially called the White House?
Answer – 3. Theodore Roosevelt (succeeded to Presidency in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated; elected 1904)
Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to officially call his residence in Washington DC the “White House.” It had previously been officially called the Executive Mansion or the President’s House.
In the War of 1812, the British captured Washington DC and ransacked and burnt the President’s House in retaliation for America’s burning of Upper Canada’s Parliament Buildings in York Ontario, in 1812.
American people had been calling the President’s House the “White House” informally since 1810. The rebuilt building was painted with lime-based whitewash in 1798 to protect the porous stones from freezing. This whitewash gave the building its then unofficial and now official name.
Q5. Who was the first President to live in the White House (or ‘The President’s House’)?
Answer – 3. John Adams (elected 1796)
Soon after the inauguration of President George Washington in 1789, plans were put in place to build a President’s House in the Federal District. In 1800 John Adams and his wife Abigail took up residency in the White House. 2 days after moving in, Adams wrote this in a letter to his wife “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”. President Franklin D Roosevelt later had this blessing carved into the mantel of the White House’s State Dining Room
Q6. Which US President appointed the first African American to their cabinet?
Answer – 3. Lyndon B. Johnson (‘LBJ’, succeeded to Presidency in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated, elected 1964)
LBJ was the first American president to name an African American to his cabinet. In 1966 he appointed Robert C. Weaver head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Since then many have followed in Weaver’s footsteps, most notably Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice who have both held the post of Secretary of State, the most senior cabinet position. Well the most senior position that is apart from the role of President, held by Barrack Obama from 2008 to 2016.
Q7 – Who was the first US President born in a hospital?
Answer – 1. President Jimmy Carter (elected 1976)
In 1924 James Earl Carter, the son of a peanut farmer, was the first US President to be born in a hospital.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in second floor apartment in Tampico, Illinois.
Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California in a house his father built (elected 1968, 1972).
Leslie Lynch King, Jr (who later changed his name to Gerald Ford) was born in his grandparents’ house in Omaha, Nebraska ( succeeded to Presidency in 1974 when President Nixon resigned).
Q8. Name as many US Presidents as you can who were directly related to each other.
Answer
1. John Quincy Adams (the 6th President) was the son of John Adams (the 2nd President).
2. James Madison (the 4th President) and Zachary Taylor (the 12th President) were second cousins.
3. Franklin D Roosevelt (the 32nd President) was a fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President).
4. George W. Bush (the 43rd President) is the son of George Bush (the 41st President).
Q9. Name the US President who failed as a business man, storekeeper, and farmer. He also failed in his bid to be Speaker, his first attempt to enter Congress, when he ran for the United States Senate and when he sought the nomination for the Vice Presidency. Who was this Presidential ‘failure’?
Answer – President Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the greatest President in American history, failed at many, many things before he became US President. He is perhaps most remembered for his insightful quotes such as:
“The problem with internet quotes is that you can’t always depend on their accuracy” Abraham Lincoln, 1864
Q10. How many US Presidents have died in office? Name as many as you can.
Answer – 8.
1. William Henry Harrison in 1841. He died of pneumonia served as President for 32 days, the shortest term of any US President.
2. Zachary Taylor in 1850. He became ill from the heat at a ceremony in Washington DC and died five days later of intestinal ailments.
3. Abraham Lincoln in 1865. He was assassinated on Good Friday by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth. He was watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC. His assassination occurred just 5 days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in the US Civil War.
4. James A. Garfield in 1881. He was assassinated in a railway station in Washington DC only 4 months into his term by Charles J. Guiteau. He died 11 weeks later. Guiteau was a writer and lawyer who was highly offended by Garfield’s rejections of his various job applications. He was hanged for his crime.
5. William McKinley in 1901. He was assassinated in Buffalo, New York by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. He died 8 days later from gangrene and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him.
6. Warren G. Harding in 1923. Harding suffered a sudden heart attack in his hotel in San Francisco. The scandals that have marred the reputation of his administration did not emerge until after his death.
7. Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945. Tremendously overworked in his last few years, FDR suffered a fatal stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia. A month later the war in Europe ended and President Harry Truman dedicated Victory in Europe Day and its celebrations to Roosevelt’s memory. FDR won a record four presidential elections; repealed Prohibition; authored the New Deal; led the US though WWII; and founded the Securities & Exchange Commission (with Joseph P. Kennedy as its head).
8. John Kennedy in 1963. He was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dealey Plaza, Dallas while travelling with his wife Jacqui; Texas Democratic Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie in the Presidential motorcade. Governor Connally went on to serve as Secretary of the Treasury as a Republican under President Richard Nixon.
Q11 Who was the first President to be impeached?
Answer – 2. Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 by the House of Representatives for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. The only other President who has been impeached is Bill Clinton in 1998. President Nixon resigned before he could be successfully impeached in 1974.
Both Johnson & Clinton were later acquitted by the Senate.
Q12. Who was the first President to win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Answer – 1 Theodore (‘Teddy’) Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. In the prior year he served as a mediator to end the 1904-05 war between Russia and Japan (effectively the war was won by Japan).
President Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
President Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for founding the League of Nations (predecessor to the United Nations).
President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a few months after his inauguration in 2009. The citation stated it was for “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
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