14 Crazy Firsts in White House History
What, you thought the White House came pre-installed with ghosts and toilets?
1978: The First Computer
Jimmy Carter ushered in the modern era when he got the filing cabinet-sized HP 3000 installed in the West Wing, and later an IBM laser printer. Trust me, they get more interesting than this.
1917: The First Picketers
Suffragists fighting for women’s right to vote picketed outside of the White House for two straight years, racking up 200 arrests before the 19th Amendment was finally passed.
1891: The First Light Switches
Benjamin Harrison saw electricity installed in the White House. But he was so afraid of getting electrocuted that he ordered his staff to turn the lights on and off for him.
1881: The First Air Conditioner
James A. Garfield was fatally shot, but it took him quite a while to shuffle off this mortal coil. As he lay stinkily dying, his wounds decaying in the summer heat, Navy engineers were ordered to slap together a fan that would blow continually across screens soaked in ice water.
1880: The First Typewriter
Rutherford B. Hayes became the proud owner of a Fairbanks & Company Improved Number Two Typewriter, marking the end of clerks handwriting every single Presidential missive. Okay, that’s the last boring one.
1869: The First In-Law
Ulysses S. Grant won the Civil War, but at what cost? His father-in-law, Frederick Dent, was an all-around huge piece of shit: technically a Union supporter, but also somehow a secessionist, a Confederate sympathizer and a lifelong slave owner who was left destitute after the institution was abolished. Dent was forced to move into the White House, and spent his final years hanging around trying to influence diplomatic visitors and business leaders alike. He maintained a rivalry with Grant’s father, saying they should “take better care of that old gentleman. He is feeble and deaf as a post and yet you permit him to wander all over Washington alone.”
1862: The First Seances
The American public became extremely spiritual during the Civil War, when their best and brightest were murdering each other left and right. After Willie Lincoln died at age 11, probably from typhoid he picked up drinking the White House’s filthy water, Mary Lincoln started holding regular seances in the White House’s Red Room.
1911: The First Official Anti-Ghost Policy
Major Archibald Butt, military aid to William Howard Taft, wrote to his sister about “The Thing,” apparently the ghost of a 15-year-old boy that had been scaring the shit out of his coworkers: “They say that the first knowledge one has of the presence of the Thing is a slight pressure on the shoulder, as if someone were leaning over your shoulder to see what you might be doing.” Taft ordered Butt to fire any staff member who so much as mentioned The Thing.
1853: ‘The First Flush’
The origin of White House plumbing is a tough one to pin down. Sources say that Thomas Jefferson had wooden pipes running water to some parts of the White House in the early 1800s, and that others later augmented those with iron pipes and pumps. But 1853 seems to be the year they officially got central plumbing, with Millard Fillmore perhaps performing the inaugural “first flush of 1853.”
1893: The First Birth
Grover and Frances Cleveland’s second daughter, Esther, popped out on September 9th in their marital bed.
1841: The First (Known) Death
The O.G. White House was built largely using the labor of enslaved people and, conveniently for patriotic whitewashers, “little is known” about whether and how many people died in its construction. With that in mind, 10 people are known to have died at the White House. Only two of them were presidents, with William Henry Harrison leading the charge after catching pneumonia.
1814: The First Terror Attack
After American forces set fire to Canada’s parliament, British forces retaliated by burning down the White House. Approximately one painting and a couple of stone walls are all that remain of the original structure. Another big fire broke out in 1929, and Herbert Hoover himself ran into the burning Oval Office to retrieve god knows what before the Secret Service dragged him out.
1800: The First Pets
John Adams was the first president to actually live in the White House, and more importantly, the first to bring pets with him — two dogs named Juno and freaking Satan.
1790: The First Proposed Presidential Residence
Philadelphia was big mad about the city of Washington being built explicitly to become the nation’s capital, after all the history they’d notched up right there at home. Without anyone asking, the city of Philadelphia built the famously humble George Washington a presidential palace to convince him to keep the capital there. Washington was like “that’s a bit much” and opted to crash literally anywhere else whenever he was in town.
