Play Presidential Trivia!
Do you know which president was the first to live in
the White House? (Hint: It wasn’t George Washington!) Do you know which
president served the shortest term? (Hint: He was president for 31 days in
1841.) Do you know which presidents have been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize?
Find these answers—and make up your own presidential
trivia questions to ask young people!—by digging into the NCBLA’s Presidential Fact Files on the NCBLA's education website OurWhiteHouse.org, the companion website to the NCBLA's art and history anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out.
The Presidential Fact Files is a treasure trove of information for
every one of our nation’s presidents that includes the dates of each president’s
terms, party affiliation, family information, as well as legacy summaries and
famous quotes. Using the information on each president’s page, you can quickly
make up a list of questions regarding a president’s accomplishments or failures,
an event that took place during the president’s term, or a famous line from a
speech. Each presidential page also includes a “Did You Know?” category, which
features additional facts perfect for a trivia game, such as the fact that
George Washington was the only president to be elected by a unanimous vote and
Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jot down questions, type them up, or create questions on
the fly by reading the Presidential Fact Files web pages from your smartphone or
tablet computer. You can choose to play presidential trivia with just a couple
people, or you can play with a large group divided into teams. Encourage kids to
review the presidential and first lady facts and write their own trivia
questions to share with friends and the adults in their lives.
If you plan to play with a group of kids who are different
ages, you might want to consider creating a rating system for your questions,
such as Easy, Average, and Advanced. Or, consider awarding bonus points for a
particularly difficult question.
You can expand your trivia coverage by creating some
questions based on America’s first ladies using the NCBLA’s First Lady
Fact Files. You can also create questions based on the informative essays
and stories in Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. Be sure to take
a look at the presidential images and notes in Bob Kolar's "1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue: Who's in the House?" Kolar's illustration is featured above.
Sample Trivia Questions and Answers
• Which president was the
first to live in the White House? (Answer: John Adams)
• Which president served the
shortest term? (Answer: William Henry Harrison)
• Which president is famous
for having said, “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for
you––ask what you can do for your country?” (Answer: John F. Kennedy)
• Which president was the
first to use electricity in the White House? (Answer: Benjamin Harrison)
• Before the passage of the
22nd amendment, presidential terms were not limited to two. Which president
served FOUR terms? (Answer: Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
• Almost any adult American
citizen is qualified to become president. Article II, Section 1 of the
Constitution establishes the exact qualifications. What are they? (Answer:
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution establishes that anyone who is a
natural-born U.S. citizen, at least thirty-five years old, and has lived in the
United States for at least fourteen years can become president.)
• Which presidential
candidate was the first to promote his candidacy using television? (Answer:
Dwight Eisenhower)
• Which president proclaimed
"The Star-Spangled Banner" to be our national anthem? (Answer: Herbert
Hoover)
• Which president campaigned
successfully in 1840 using the populist slogan "Log Cabin and Hard Cider?"
(Answer: William Henry Harrison)
• Which president was so
well-known for his silent nature that during a dinner party a guest teased that
she had bet a friend she could entice the president to say more than five words
during the meal, to which he answered, "You lose?" (Answer: Calvin
Coolidge)
• Which first lady worked
with the Library of Congress to create the National Book Festival, an annual
event first held on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2001? (Answer: Laura
Bush)
• Who was the only
presidential candidate to ever be elected by a unanimous vote? (Answer:
George Washington)
• Which president considered
himself to have been a "sissy" as a child, having said, "If there was any danger
of getting into a fight, I always ran?" (Answer: Harry Truman)
• Which president was the
first one to throw the first pitch in a major league baseball game? (Answer:
William Howard Taft)
• Which president met with
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to improve relations and negotiate a treaty to
eliminate a substantial number of nuclear missiles? (Answer: Ronald
Reagan)
• Who was the first First
Lady to sit in Cabinet meetings? (Answer: Rosalynn Carter)
• Which president was
honored for his pioneering work in the discovery and study of fossils by having
a species of mastodon named for him? (Answer: Thomas Jefferson)
• Which modern president is
credited with passage of the Family Medical Leave Act? (Answer: Bill
Clinton)
• Who assumed the presidency
upon President Lincoln's assassination? (Answer: Andrew Johnson)
• Which president, in the
wake of 9-11, took time off from his duties at the White House to throw the
first pitch at a Major League Baseball playoff game in Yankee Stadium to show
his support for New Yorkers? (Answer: George W. Bush)
• Which first lady hired a
French chef to run the White House kitchens? (Answer: Jacqueline
Kennedy)
• Our 43rd president, George
W. Bush, is the son of former President George H. W. Bush, who served as
America's 41st president. Who was our country's first father and son pair to
both be elected as president? (Answer: John Quincy Adams served as our sixth
president. He was the son of our nation's second president, John Adams.)
• Which president, having
been thrust into the position following the death of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, made the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan as a means to end
World War II? (Answer: Harry S. Truman)
• Who is the only vice
president to have assumed the presidency for a reason other than the president's
death? (Answer: Gerald R. Ford)
• Who was the first and only
president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? (Hint: He served from
1921 through 1930). (Answer: William Howard Taft)
For more activities to help you celebrate Presidents Month, click here.
In the NCBLA's anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, kids can dig deep into America's past and discover how slaves helped build the White House ("Slaves Helped Build the White House!" by Walter Dean Myers), read the memoir of former slave Paul Jennings' account of working in President Madison's White House ("The First White House Memoir: 1865"), and learn about Elizabeth Keckly, who served as seamstress to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln ("Elizabeth Keckly" by Patricia C. and Fredrick L. McKissack). And in the paperback version, young people can read Nikki Grimes' poem "Inaugural Morning" illustrated by A. G. Ford, which provides a poignant account of President Obama's first inauguration. 
