By Any Other Name

What's your opinion of President Blythe? How about President King? If you haven't heard of them, you're not alone. But they were presidents, just the same. That's because some presidents have undergone name changes over time. Here's a look at the morphing names of presidents.

• Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, a Congressman mistakenly identified him as Ulysses S. Grant when nominating him for admission to West Point. Grant objected to the error, but it stuck.
• Leslie Lynch King Jr.'s stepfather was Gerald Rudolff Ford. At a very young age, Leslie's mom and stepfather (though never legally adopting him) began calling him Gerald Rudolff Ford Jr. He formally changed his name in 1935, but chose a different spelling of his middle name. Thus he became Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.
• William Jefferson Blythe III's father died before he was born. His mother remarried to a gentleman named Roger Clinton. When William was 14 years old, he formally changed his name to William Jefferson Clinton.
• While not a name change, Harry S. Truman's middle initial stands for...nothing. His parents didn't give him a middle name, just the letter S.
• Dwight David Eisenhower was actually born David Dwight Eisenhower. He changed the order of his names when entering West Point.

Shhh...Don't Tell the Vice President

Running for an unprecedented fourth term (now forbidden by the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) Franklin D Roosevelt was growing increasingly ill. As a result, he ditched Vice President Henry Wallace in favor of Senator Harry Truman. Just 82 days after his inauguration, Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, leaving the presidency to Truman. It was only then, as he inherited the Oval Office, that Truman first learned about an awesome secret that had been purposely kept from him throughout the campaign and during his brief stint as vice president: the Manhattan Project. With the world at war and his health failing, you might have expected FDR to have kept his vice president adequately briefed. But that was not the case. Was it a mistake to have kept Truman in the dark about the the development of atomic weapons? Maybe so. Ironically, Truman was the first (and so far only) president to use atomic weapons in wartime. (Photo courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum)

Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to yesterday's quiz (see the April 5th entry below):

1: A
2: F
3: D
4: C
5: B
6: E
7: G

Harry Truman's remark came during a dinner party at Justice Hugo Black's home designed to smooth tensions over a Supreme Court ruling Truman didn't like. The remark was reported in The Pursuit of Justice by Kermit L. Hall and John J. Patrick:

Black's purpose was to reduce tensions arising from a decision that Truman considered a personal rebuke. In his autobiography, Justice William O. Douglas remembered, "Truman was gracious though a bit testy at the beginning of the evening. But after the bourbon and canapes were passed, he turned to Hugo [Black] and said, "Hugo, I don't much care for your law but, by golly, this bourbon is good."