...but did you know, two other Presidents were born in February? Do you know who they were?
President's Day rarely falls on the actual birthday of any American president.
Four presidents - George Washington, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan—were born in February.
Presidents Day, today, is celebrated on the third Monday of the month. However, it wasn't always.
Presidents Day is celebrated on the third Monday in February, thanks to the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
Presidents’ Days origin lies in the 1880s, when the birthday of Washington—commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and the first president of the United States—was first celebrated as a federal holiday. In 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, which moved a number of federal holidays to Mondays. The change was designed to schedule certain holidays so that workers had a number of long weekends throughout the year, however, many to this day opposethe idea and believe that those holidays should be celebrated on the dates they actually occurred.
During debate on the bill, it was proposed that Washington’s Birthday be renamed Presidents’ Day to honor the birthdays of both Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12).
Lincoln’s birthday was celebrated in many states, but it has never been an official federal holiday.
Following much discussion, Congress rejected the name change. After the bill went into effect in 1971, however, Presidents’ Day became the commonly accepted name, due in part to retailers’ use of that name to promote sales and the holiday’s proximity to Lincoln’s birthday.
At the Presidents Hall of Fame, every day is Presidents Day!
Following is a list of every Presidents Birthday:
January Millard Fillmore – 1/7/1800 Richard Nixon – 1/9/1913 William McKinley – 1/29/1843 Franklin Roosevelt – 1/30/1882 |
February Ronald Reagan – 2/6/1911 William Harrison – 2/9/1773 Abraham Lincoln – 2/12/1809 George Washington – 2/22/1732 |
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March Andrew Jackson – 3/15/1767 James Madison – 3/16/1751 Grover Cleveland – 3/18/1837 John Tyler – 3/29/1790 |
April Thomas Jefferson – 4/13/1743 Benjamin Harrison – 4/20/1833 James Buchanan – 4/23/1791 Ulysses Grant – 4/27/1822 James Monroe – 4/28/1758 |
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May Harry Truman – 5/8/1884 John Kennedy – 5/29/1917 |
June George H.W. Bush – 6/12/1924 Donald Trump – 6/14/1946 |
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July Calvin Coolidge – 7/4/1872 George W. Bush – 7/6/1946 John Q. Adams – 7/11/1767 Gerald Ford – 7/14/1913 |
August Barack Obama – 8/4/1961 Herbert Hoover – 8/10/1874 William Clinton – 8/19/1946 Lyndon Johnson – 8/27/1908 |
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September William Taft – 9/15/1857 |
October Jimmy Carter – 10/1/1924 Rutherford Hayes – 10/4/1822 Chester Arthur – 10/5/1829 Dwight Eisenhower – 10/14/1890 Theodore Roosevelt – 10/27/1858 John Adams – 10/30/1735 |
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November James Polk – 11/2/1795 Warren Harding – 11/2/1865 James Garfield – 11/19/1831 Franklin Pierce – 11/23/1804 Zachary Taylor – 11/24/1784 |
December Martin Van Buren – 12/5/1782 Woodrow Wilson – 12/28/1856 Andrew Johnson – 12/29/1808 |