Presidents Day: 10 questions to test your knowledge of our U.S. presidents
This future president attended Bowdoin College (shown in this 2007 photo). In fact, he married the daughter of the college’s president. Where is Bowdoin and who was the future president? (Pat Wellenbach / Associated Press)
Think you know your U.S. presidents? Try these questions on for size. One future chief executive defended a civil rights activist; another taught in a school so poor that it influenced his legislative agenda. A third came to the aid of foreigners caught in the Boxer Rebellion in China. Who were they? Answers on the last page.
--Catharine Hamm
When the Boxer Rebellion broke out in China--most of the uprising occurred in Beijing, pictured here on a smoggy winter day--this future president helped his fellow foreigners. Who was he and what is his connection with California? (Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)
President Obama and his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, visit the home of this president. Whose home is it and why is its positioning different from neighboring homes? (Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images)
This future president ran a haberdashery in the city that’s home to this art museum. Who was the president, what city is this and what’s the name of this museum? (Orlin Wagner / Associated Press)
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A border patrol agent is pictured near Cotula, Texas, where this president taught school. Who was the president and why was his tenure as a teacher there important? (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
This future president practiced law in New York, which this winter has been cold and snowy. At the age of 24, he sued a Brooklyn streetcar company in 1854 for making Lizzie Jennings, an African American, get off the streetcar for no reason. Who was the future president and what was the outcome of the case? (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)
1. George Washington’s Virginia estate, once called Little Hunting Creek Plantation, is known as Mount Vernon. 2. William Howard Taft, Cincinnati 3. Bowdoin College is in Brunswick, Maine, and the future president was Franklin Pierce, born in 1804 in Hillsboro, N.H. 4. Dwight Eisenhower was born in Dennison, Texas, but grew up in Abilene, Kansas, home of his presidential library. 5. Herbert Hoover, who began attending Stanford in 1891, its inaugural year. 6. Thomas Jefferson and Monticello in Virginia. It was built on an 867-foot hill. Most houses of the time were set down in lowland areas. 7. Harry Truman’s hat business was in Kansas City, Mo., home of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. 8. William Henry Harrison was the president; his grandson was Benjamin Harrison. William Henry Harrison died in 1841, after one month in office. 9. Lyndon Johnson. His students were desperately poor, and the experience influenced him profoundly. During Johnson’s presidency, legislation was designed to create a “great society” in which poverty and injustice did not exist. 10. Chester A. Arthur sued the Third Avenue Railroad Co. and won. The company immediately desegregated its streetcars. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)