On the way home from Mari's first soccer game a couple of weeks ago we were in the van when Mari started naming all the American Presidents. In short order this morphed into trying to name them in order, then that morphed into naming the Presidents who had the same last name as other Presidents. It is embarrassing to admit how few Presidents I can name.
Once we got home I started reading some encyclopedia articles about Adams, Madison, Monroe, and JQ Adams. This prompted me to make a list of all the Presidents, and then calculate the length of their lives, their lifespan after being President, and their age when they became President. I turned this info into a chart.
A tidbit I picked up was that one of the Adams had a wife who developed breast cancer. Her treatment included a mastectomy, performed without the aid of anesthesia! Her cancer later reappeared and she died.
Another tidbit I picked up was that the description of the Louisianna area that Jefferson's representatives negotiated to buy from France included this phrase, "the island of New Orleans."
A few days later I bought a book written by Max Skidmore, a UMKC professor, about the lives of the Presidents after they left office. While I haven't finished it yet, it is proving very interesting. Skidmore makes the point, that my Presidents' chart supports, that our current Presidents are surviving much longer after their term in office than most of the 19th century Presidents. Because this is a relatively recent phenomonon, these Presidents don't have many examples of what they should be/could be doing with the rest of their lives.
