Presidential history: Secretaries to the presidents: The first White House gatekeepers

From informal amanuenses to institutional gatekeepers, the secretary to the president evolved alongside executive power — ...
AZ Central

Were these men America’s real first presidents?

Every American knows about George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but what about John Hanson, Elias Boudinot and Thomas Mifflin? Some historians point to the latter three as the country’s ...
Hartford Courant

History shows how presidents expand power. A look at how it’s been done for centuries.

Presidents in 1800s expand wartime and veto powers: expansions of executive power in the 1800s under Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Abraham Lincoln. Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) Introduced ...
Smithsonian Magazine

One Was a Teenage Diplomat. Another Was a Nuclear Engineer. Here’s How Eight Presidents Made Their Mark Outside of the White House

In 1876, when James A. Garfield was serving his seventh term in Congress, he devised an original proof for the Pythagorean theorem. A classics scholar who’d taught math, history, philosophy, Greek, ...

How Trump’s State of the Union Speech, Longest in History, Compares to Other Presidents

It surpassed the length of the State of the Union addresses Mr. Trump made during his first term, which averaged 1 hour 20 minutes, and was the longest of any president since The American Presidency ...
Business Insider

The almost-presidents: 10 Americans who nearly assumed the nation's highest office

Throughout US history, there have been many presidential what-ifs. Several presidents were nearly assassinated, meaning their vice presidents would assume power. Some elections were decided by thin ...