1. The initiation of Andrew Johnson as Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president in 1865 was marred slightly by the reality that Johnson was unbelievably drunk. He’d been downing whiskey in an effort to medicate himself for typhoid fever fever (that was his justification anyway) and was so far gone by the time he was sworn in that he thick his oaths, and had to give away his attempts to swear in new senators.

2. These days, most presidents have a cat or a dog as their presidential pet. nevertheless John Quincy Adams and Herbert Hoover both had pet alligators,Calvin Coolidge had two lions, a brush kangaroo and a pygmy hippopotamus (among other people while Theodore Roosevelt kept a badger called Josiah who used to chew people.

3. William Henry Harrison’s 1841 name as the ninth president is the shortest ever – he made it through just under 31 days of presidency before inconveniently dying of pneumonia.

4. Sucky presidential tags Andrew Jackson was known as ‘Old Hickory, Ulysses S. Grant was unflattering known as ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’, momentary William Henry Harrison was ‘Tippecanoe’, and Zachary Taylor revelled in the title ‘Old Rough And Ready’.

5. Twentieth president James Garfield had a party technique in which he would simultaneously write in Latin with one hand, and Ancient Greek with the additional Show-off

6. The merely president to get married in the White House was Grover Cleveland in 1886. The 49-year-old Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, who he named ‘Frank’, and whose legal guardian he had once been after her father (a close buddy of his) died. This would almost certainly be more controversial if it happened today.

7. The Secret Service has code names for the president, vice-president and their family associates Ronald Reagan was ‘Rawhide’, George H. W. Bush was ‘Timberwolf’, Bill Clinton was ‘Eagle’, George W. Bush was ‘Trailblazer’ and Barack Obama is ‘Renegade’. Al Gore’s daughter Karenna frequently moaned that she was put on the spot and told to pick her own code name; she quickly regretted opting to be called ‘Smurfette’ wherever she went.

8. William Howard Taft was the hardest American president – so large that he occasionally got stuck in the White House bath, and had to be assisted out by aides. He eventually got a bigger bath.

9. In elections since the end of WWII, the taller of the two main party applicants has won the election 75% of the time. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are the only post-war presidents to have disappointed taller rivals. Since 1900, nobody under the highness of 5ft 9in has ever won the presidential election.

10. Thomas Jefferson, the third (and many would say greatest) president of the United States was not purely one of the key Founding Fathers and the principal author of the statement of Independence – he also invented the swivel chair.