Today in 1475 Michelangelo was born. One of his masterworks was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, though if a poem he wrote about the job is to be believed, making all that great art was pretty painful.
Today is the observance of President's Day, originally a holiday marking the February 22nd birthday of George Washington, but along the way it also became known as Bicycle Day.
Today is the birthday President John Tyler. He was born in 1790, and he served as US president in the 1840s. And he has a grandson who is alive in 2022.
Champ and Major are the new White House dogs, but there have been lots of pets at the president's house over the years, including Rebecca the raccoon, who definitely left her mark on the place during Calvin Coolidge's presidency.
Some presidential inauguration days are memorable; others are quiet. But the one for Martin Van Buren was probably cheesy, thanks to a giant cheddar sent to Andrew Jackson and a public party to eat it just before Van Buren moved into the White House. (Appropriately enough, today is also National Cheese Lover's Day.)
There have been a few times when the world's most powerful address wasn’t available to presidents. For Gerald Ford in 1974, that meant he spent the first 10 days of his presidency living at his family home.
For years, on New Year’s Day, Americans could go the White House and shake hands with the president. It's a tradition that went back to John Adams and the early days of the Executive Mansion.
