Monday Trivia, No. 19

Burt Likko 30 Comments

Aside from serving as Vice President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, William King, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden have something in common that none of the other men who have held the august #2 position can claim.  William A. Wheeler comes close but technically does not belong on this list.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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30 Comments

  1. Not the answer to the question asked, but William King pairs with two of the others on the list.

    1. King and Ford were born with the same surname.
    2. King was dead for most of his term, while Cheney was among the undead for all of his.

    • Yeah, the trivia question is not really intended to be platform upon which one might take shots at these politicians.

      • Damn! And I have had an awesome anti-John Tyler zinger waiting in the wings, too.

        • And don’t get me started on William A. Wheeler.

  2. A shot in the dark, but “They did not serve in the military?”

      • How about, each was older than the president they served under?

        (given enough time and random guesses, I WILL get this)

        • I thought of that too, but Adams was older than Jefferson. (And Teddy Roosevelt was so young … yes, Fairbanks was older.)

          • Damn it Mike!

            OK, let’s try: only VPs not to attend ivy league schools.

          • Apologies; feedback was posted from my phone where threading is not so easy to monitor. “…only VPs not to attend ivy league schools” was the phrase to which I referred.

          • They went to state colleges. (Colony college for Jefferson, I suppose.)

          • Yes, I had to make the call that William & Mary was similar enough to what we would call a “public university” today.

            Thanks to Will Truman for the question.

          • And the tricky bit about Wheeler is that he went to UVM: public now, but a private college back then.

          • Hey, I went there and none of us could have made the call even then. I think it’s called a “public ivy” whatever the fish that means. Remember though, according to Steely Dan, William & Mary simply won’t do. Hence I’m never going back to my old school.

  3. Little known fact: in their earlier lives, each was an understudy for a role in CATS. (If you are wondering why Nixon isn’t on the list,remember: Nixon was in a touring production of Lord of The Dance, not CATS.)

  5. Then two more guesses and I quit:

    1. Only VPs not to be accepted into an ivy league school

    2. only vps not to be accepted into ivy league or west point.

    damn your stupid trivia questions.

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