franklin roosevelt

#32 FACTS:

--Franklin Roosevelt is the only President to serve more than two terms (he died about three months into his 4th term). The two-term tradition had been an unwritten rule (until the 22nd Amendment after FDR's presidency) since George Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796, and both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt were attacked for trying to obtain a third non-consecutive term.

--Eleanor Roosevelt disliked sex, and considered it "an ordeal to be endured". Perhaps not coincidentally, FDR had affairs outside the marriage, including a recurring one with Eleanor's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Though they supposedly stopped seeing each other (his mother threatened to cut FDR off financially if he got a divorce), they hooked back up years later--Lucy was even given the code name "Mrs. Johnson" by the Secret Service.

--Franklin's first cousin, Ellen Roosevelt, was the 1890 U.S. Open Championships women's singles and doubles tennis champion and is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

--In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, Roosevelt contracted an illness diagnosed at the time as polio, but since then the subject of considerable debate, which resulted in permanent paralysis from the waist down. In the public mind, Roosevelt has been by far the most famous polio survivor. However, his age at onset (39 years) and the majority of symptoms of his illness are more consistent with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Since Roosevelt's cerebrospinal fluid was not examined, the cause may never be known for certain.

Fitting his hips and legs with iron braces, Roosevelt taught himself to walk a short distance by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons. FDR used a car with specially designed hand controls, which provided him further mobility.

--It is a little known fact that in the first draft of his Dec. 8th address to Congress, the line "December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy..." was instead "Man, I have a serious case of biscuit-mouth today..."