GEORGE WASHINGTON ~ February 22, 1732 ~ December 14, 1799

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. He was also the commander in chief of all American forces during the American Revolutionary War.

His mother was Mary Ball and his father was Augustine Washington. They were teachers at the local university. They lived in Virginia. As a child, Washington did not attend school for very long.

There is a nice but untrue story that Washington cut down his father's cherry tree. When asked, he did not lie and said that he did cut down the tree. This story is supposed to show that Washington was honest. The funny thing is that the story is not honest because it was made up by Parson Weemes.

Before the Revolutionary War
Washington was a farmer like his father. His large farm, or plantation, was called Mount Vernon. He also served as a surveyor, someone who measures farms.

Washington began his army career during the French and Indian War. He first was a messenger for Virginia. He later led troops against the French. The British did not think soldiers from the colonies were as good as they were, so Washington went home and started to farm again.

In 1759, Washington married Martha Custis Washington. They did not have any children.

The Revolution
Washington wanted the Thirteen Colonies to be independent and was a delegate to the Continental Congress, which wanted independence. Washington was chosen by the Second Continental Congress to be the commanding general of the Continental Army. Washington led the army from 1775 until the end of the war in 1783. He is noted for leading troops across the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1777, in a surprise attack on German mercenaries at Trenton, New Jersey. The British had more troops and more supplies than Washington. However, Washington kept his troops together. He did not win many battles, but he never let the British destroy his army. With the help of the French navy, Washington made the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

After the war
When the Revolutionary war ended, Washington went home to Mount Vernon. He wanted the colonies to have a strong government. Washington was voted president of the Constitutional Convention in 1785. Washington wanted the states to ratify the Constitution of the United States and they did.
Presidency
In 1789, Washington was elected president without any competition. Washington was the first President of the United States. Washington helped the government get started. Washington did not belong to a political party. He was re-elected to a second term, but chose not to run for a third term. Because of this, most other presidents chose to follow this tradition of not running for a 3rd term.
Retirement
Washington went back home to Mount Vernon after his second term ended in 1797. He died on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon at the age of 67. He was the only leader of the early United States who decided in his will that his slaves were to be freed once he himself and his wife had died. Washington, D.C. and the state of Washington are named after him. He is on the one dollar bill and the quarter coin.

Image & text;wikipedia.com

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. ~ Born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Today is President Obama's 52nd birthday. Despite absurd claims by the so-called "Birthers," there is more than sufficient documentation that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, to Stanley Ann Dunham, an American of mainly English descent from Wichita, Kansas, and Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya.

Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple married on February 2, 1961, and Barack was born later that year. His parents separated when he was two years old and they divorced in 1964. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States. The first African American to hold the office, he served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory, from a crowded field, in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history.

He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major party African American candidate for president. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com