10 Things You Didn't Know About .......

                             In honor of President Day, here are little-known tidbits about our first president.

                             George Washington

1. He did not have wooden teeth.   Let's get that one out of the way quickly.  Although he was a man of exceptional strength and stamina, George Washington suffered from toothaches and dental troubles for most of his life.  Washington wore many different partial and complete dentures made of human teeth, ivory and lead.  One particularly incomfortable set consisted of a cow's tooth, some of Washington's own teeth, hippopotamus ivory, metal and springs.  Although it sounds weird now, the practice of buying human teeth for dental fittings was common among wealthy individuals.
2. His second inaugural address is the shortest ever given by an incoming president.  The speech, delivered in the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia, on March 4, 1793, was 135 words.
3. Washington is the only president who did not live in Washington, D.C.  He began his first term in New York City, but spent the bulk of his two terms in Philadelphia, which was the temporary national capital for 10 years while the District of Columbia was under construction.
4. He is the only president who did not represent a political party, and the only president to be unanimously elected by the Electoral College, receiving all 69 votes in the 1789 and 1792 elections.  (There was no popular vote at the time.)
5. Washington disliked foul language, but when he used it, he made it count.  The only recorded instance of Washington cursing in public came during the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778), in which the Continental Army attacked withdrawing British forces as they marched toward Sandy Hook from Philadelphia.  Washington's senior commander, Charles Lee, allowed a tactical withdrawal to become a rout when the British counterattacked.  Washington, coming up with the main force, delivered a tongue lashing to Lee and the fleeing troops on the Monmouth main road.  From all accounts, Washington acquitted himself admirably.  He went onto lead the Continental Army in its first toe-to-toe battle with British regulars, while Lee faced a court-martial and the end of his military career.
6. Washington is credited with saying lots of thing he didn't actually say.  Fro example, "I cannot tell a lie!" was apparently invented by author Mason Locke Weems in his 1880 biography of Washington.
7. Washington traveled outside the American mainland only once.  When he was 19, he sailed to Barbados with his ailing brother, who hoped the island climate would help cure his tuberculosis.  While in Barbados, Washington contracted smallpox, which left him with mild facial scars.
8. His presidency started with an eight-day ride on horseback.  Washington left his estate in Mount Vernon, Va., on April 16, 1789, to conduct a six-state triumphal journey to New York City, where he would be sworn in as the first president, Trenton and New York all held grand celebrations, and several smaller towns along the way met Washington with parades, dinners and addresses.  He took his first oath of office at Federal Hall on April 30, 1789.
9. Washington's religious views are hard to pin down.  Although he was a deeply moral man raised in the Anglican Church, Washington doesn't seem to have been devout in contemporary terms.  Many of the religious gestures attributed to him (his prayer kneeling in the snow at Valley Force, for example) turned out to be fabrications by Parson Weems and later writers.
10. His military career got off to a bad start.  In 1754, as a militia officer, Washington led a force to challenge the increasing French presence in the Ohio River Valley.  His badly designed fortifications, dubbed Fort Necessity, could shelter only about 60 men, and the lack of a roof meant their gunpowder was soaked by rain.  Roughly a third of his 300-man force was cut down, an event that helped trigger the French and Indian War (1754-63).

                                     Washington sources
                                     The information about George Washington may be found at the following sites :
        George Washington's Mount Vernon ( www.mountvernon.org/georgewashington/facts), Biography.com (www.biography.com/people/georgewashington-9524786).  The Constitution Center (blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/02/10-cool-washington-facts-on-georges-real-birthday/), "Washington:A Life," by Ron Chernow (www.npr.org/templates/story.php?storyld=130625590).