Happy Birthday to the Eighth President

John Hanson - 1st President of the US

By Grant Davies

On this day (-1) in 1732, the eighth President of the United States was born, a guy named George Washington.

The best day to celebrate the birth of the actual first President would be the actual day he was born, April 14, 1721. His name was John Hanson. I'm not sure of the birthdays or even the names of the six guys between Hanson and Washington because I'm too lazy to look them up. I'll do it later, maybe.

So even though he was the first, Hanson is largely forgotten because the old system under which he was elected was the Articles of Confederation, not the also largely forgotten Constitution. He was the guy who set up the treasury department and he also founded the first Thanksgiving Day so all the mopes today could watch football and eat like starving pigs.

As to the birthday boy, he did and said a lot of things that people remember today, but the most famous thing he ever said was directed to his corpulent colonel, Henry Knox, as the two were boarding a smallish boat to cross the Potomac river on Christmas eve. Knox was morbidly obese, around 300 hundred pounds, and Geo gently nudged him in his ample posterior with his toe as he boarded the boat. That's when he uttered the immortal words, "Shift that fat ass Harry. But slowly, or you'll swamp the damn boat!"

They went on to defeat the half witted Hessians who would still be drunk from the party by the time Geo and company got there the next morning.

And that's no BS.

Also on this day in a year I won't reveal, the proofreader of this blog was born. It was a very lucky day for the author, who married her for reasons other than her literary skills. Happy Birthday Carol.