101 Facts About George HW Bush

1. President George HW Bush made several significant contributions to the geosciences and to environmental policy.

2. President George HW Bush demonstrated a long-standing support of Historically Black Colleges and Universities over his career.

3. George HW Bush spent most of his time in Houston or at his home in Kennebunkport.

4. George HW Bush came out against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 when he was running for a US Senate seat in Texas.

5. George HW Bush used every opportunity on the campaign trail to stoke white fear of Black men and paint himself as tough on crime.

6. George HW Bush is memorialized in statue on the grounds of Hampton University.

7. George HW Bush looked for the good in each person, and he usually found it.

8. George HW Bush died on November 30, 2018, aged 94, at his home in Houston.

9. George HW Bush suffered from vascular parkinsonism, a form of Parkinson's disease which had forced him to use a motorized scooter or wheelchair since at least 2012.

10. On November 25, 2017, George HW Bush became the longest-lived US president when he surpassed the 93 years and 165 days lifespan of Gerald Ford, who died in December 2006.

11. George HW Bush was admitted to a hospital with an irregular heartbeat.

12. In 1991, The New York Times revealed that George HW Bush was suffering from Graves' disease, a non-contagious thyroid condition that his wife Barbara suffered from.

13. In July 2013, George HW Bush had his head shaved in a show of support for the two-year-old son of a member of his security detail, who had leukemia.

14. In March 2008, George HW Bush met with President of the People's Republic of China Hu Jintao, who praised Bush for his attempts at harmonizing relations between the US and China.

15. On March 2, 2006, President George HW Bush announced that his father would lead the American delegation to the inauguration of the President-elect of the Republic of Portugal Anibal Cavaco Silva.

16. In February 1999, George HW Bush was part of the American delegation to the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman.

17. President George HW Bush was Honorary Chairman of Points of Light, an international nonprofit dedicated to engaging more people and resources in solving serious social problems through voluntary service.

18. On March 12, 1990, George HW Bush met for an hour with former Prime Minister of Japan Noboru Takeshita to discuss shared economic issues and "the fact that their solution will require extraordinary efforts on both sides of the Pacific.

19. George HW Bush spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress regarding the authorization of air and land attacks, laying out four immediate objectives: "Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately, and without condition.

20. President George HW Bush created the Daily Point of Light Award in 1989 to recognize ordinary Americans from all walks of life taking direct and consequential voluntary action in their communities to solve serious social problems.

21. George HW Bush often used the "thousand points of light" theme to describe the power of citizens to solve community problems.

22. President George HW Bush devoted attention to voluntary service as a means of solving some of America's most serious social problems.

23. George HW Bush signed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act which provides monetary compensation of people who had contracted cancer and a number of other specified diseases as a direct result of their exposure to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing undertaken by the United States during the Cold War, or their exposure to high levels of radon while doing uranium mining.

24. George HW Bush worked to increase federal spending for education, childcare, and advanced technology research.

25. George HW Bush was the only president to successfully veto a civil rights act, the job-discrimination protection Civil Rights Act of 1990.

26. George HW Bush began an effort to persuade the Democratic controlled Congress to act on the budget; with Republicans believing that the best way was to cut government spending, and Democrats convinced that the only way would be to raise taxes, Bush faced problems when it came to consensus building.

27. George HW Bush entered office at a period of change in the world; the fall of the Berlin Wall came early in his presidency, and the collapse of the Soviet Union came in 1991.

28. George HW Bush became the first serving vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836, as well as the first person to succeed someone from his own party to the presidency via election to the office in his own right since Herbert Hoover in 1929.

29. George HW Bush defeated Dukakis and his running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, in the Electoral College, by 426 to 111, with Bentsen receiving one vote from a faithless elector.

30. George HW Bush pointed out that Dukakis was opposed to a law that would require all students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, a topic highlighted in Bush's nomination acceptance speech.

31. George HW Bush pinned blame on Dukakis for the pollution of Boston Harbor, as the governor of Massachusetts.

32. In March 1986, George HW Bush outlined the government's policy on the combating of terrorism.

33. George HW Bush began keeping a diary in late 1986, when the scandal was being investigated, and wrote several fake entries.

34. On July 13, 1985, George HW Bush became the first vice president to serve as acting president when Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon; Bush served as the acting president for approximately eight hours.

35. George HW Bush told reporters that while he would allow for heads of state to dictate how each meeting would transpire, there was an expectation on his part for discussions on the independence of Namibia, adding that the United States was going to retain the position of no settlement in Namibia until Cuban troops in Angola were withdrawn.

36. In November 1982, George HW Bush toured Africa, the first instance of a high United States government official visiting the continent since the Reagan administration began.

37. George HW Bush rejected the idea, responding, "Only the president lands on the South Lawn.

38. George HW Bush served in this role for 357 days, from January 30, 1976, to January 20, 1977.

39. George HW Bush took over in January 1973 and held this position as the Watergate scandal grew more damaging to Nixon.

40. George HW Bush was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 1971 and served for two years.

41. George HW Bush was elected to a second term in 1968.

42. George HW Bush supported the Nixon administration's Vietnam policies, but broke with Republicans on the issue of birth control, which he supported.

43. George HW Bush was the first House Republican to represent his Houston district, including his residence in the Tanglewood; His voting record in the House was generally conservative: Bush voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, although it was generally unpopular in his district.

44. In 1966, George HW Bush was elected to a seat in the United States House of Representatives from the 7th District of Texas; he won 57 percent of the ballots cast in a race against Democrat Frank Briscoe, the district attorney of Harris County.

45. George HW Bush worked to absorb the John Birch Society members, who were trying to take over the Party.

46. George HW Bush was a young Conservative Republican in contrast to the aging liberal Democrat Yarborough, and campaigned against pending civil rights legislation, believing it gave too much power to the federal government.

47. George HW Bush started the George HW Bush-Overbey Oil Development company in 1951 and in 1953 co-founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation, an oil company that drilled in the Permian Basin in Texas.

48. George HW Bush was elected to Phi Beta Kappa when he graduated from Yale in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.

49. George HW Bush captained the Yale baseball team and played in the first two College World Series as a left-handed first baseman.

50. George HW Bush was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and was elected its president.

51. George HW Bush earned an undergraduate degree in economics on an accelerated program that enabled him to graduate in two and a half years, rather than the usual four.

52. George HW Bush was honorably discharged from the Navy in September 1945, one month after the surrender of Japan.

53. George HW Bush was promoted to lieutenant on August 1, 1944, and San Jacinto commenced operations against the Japanese in the Bonin Islands.

54. George HW Bush became a naval aviator, taking training for aircraft carrier operations aboard USS Sable.

55. George HW Bush began his formal education at the Greenwich Country Day School, then attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts beginning in 1938, where he held a number of leadership positions which included president of the senior class, secretary of the student council, president of the community fund-raising group, a member of the editorial board of the school newspaper, and captain of the varsity baseball and soccer teams.

56. George HW Bush died on November 30, 2018, aged 94 years, 171 days, making him the longest-lived president in US history.

57. George HW Bush was reelected in 1968 but was defeated for election to the Senate in 1970.

58. George HW Bush moved his family to West Texas where he entered the oil business and became a millionaire by the age of 40 in 1964.

59. George HW Bush served until September 1945, and then attended Yale University, graduating in 1948.

60. George HW Bush postponed his university studies after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday, and became one of its youngest aviators.

61. George HW Bush stresses that his goal is to free Kuwait rather than conquer Iraq.

62. George HW Bush appeared on national television to inform the American people that the United States and its allies were engaged in a war against Iraq.

63. George HW Bush, bolstered by his high public approval ratings, began the ground war the next day.

64. President George HW Bush exercised personal diplomacy to amass and maintain a coalition of twenty-five nations to oppose Iraq.

65. George HW Bush proclaimed the agreement as the beginning of a "new world order.

66. George HW Bush ruled out further military action in Iraq but urged continued international economic sanctions against the Hussein regime.

67. George HW Bush launched Operation Desert Storm, mobilizing international forces that destroyed Hussein's air and land military capabilities in a six-week war that was televised virtually from start to finish.

68. George HW Bush supported the Russian reformist president Mikhail Gorbachev and maintained a remote and formal relationship with all the countries of the former Soviet Union.

69. George HW Bush was active in the Republican Party in Texas, and in 1966 he was elected to the US House of Representatives.

70. George HW Bush served until 1976 and won high marks for improving agency morale.

71. George HW Bush enlisted in the US Naval Reserve, and by the end of 1943 he was the youngest fighter pilot in the navy.

72. In 2005 George HW Bush joined with his successor to raise funds for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and subsequently served as UN special envoy for the South Asian earthquake disaster.

73. In 1991, 1992, and 1993, George HW Bush signed nuclear disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union and then Russia that called for substantial cuts in nuclear arms.

74. In 1988, George HW Bush defeated Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis to become the forty-first president of the United States.

75. George HW Bush actively tried to restore morale within the agency and to deflect criticisms of the agency's past role and authority.

76. George HW Bush reentered the public consciousness as two of his sons pursued their own political careers.

77. On September 2, 1944, while George HW Bush was assigned to the USS Jacinto, his plane was shot down near a Japanese island.

78. In 1992, George HW Bush lost the presidential election to Democratic challenger bill clinton, the governor of Arkansas.

79. George HW Bush became the forty-first chief executive after serving for eight years as the nation's vice president under ronald reagan.

80. In 1988, George HW Bush defeated Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis to become the 41st president of the United States.

81. George HW Bush was an unannounced candidate for the Republican presidential nomination of 1980 starting in 1977.

82. George HW Bush campaigned as a Goldwater Republican, opposing civil rights legislation, calling for US withdrawal from the United Nations should the Peoples Republic of China be admitted, and demanding a cutback in foreign aid spending.

83. George HW Bush beat Al Gore in one of the closest presidential elections in history.

84. George HW Bush was ordered to the Persian Gulf to protect US interests in Iraq in light of the Islamic State takeover of several major cities in that country.

85. George HW Bush arrived off southern Turkey, which is under 500 miles away from Crimea, amid developing tensions over Ukraine with Russia.

86. George HW Bush tested the MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft from squadron VMX-22 as a potential carrier onboard delivery aircraft as well as operating mine-sweeping MH-53E helicopters from squadron HM-14.

87. George HW Bush completed her PIA maintenance cycle and began sea trials on 3 December 2012.

88. George HW Bush began her four-month overhaul at Norfolk Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, Virginia, included scheduled short-term technical upgrades.

89. George HW Bush successfully completed her first flight deck certification on that day.

90. George HW Bush was officially delivered to the Navy on 11 May 2009.

91. George HW Bush signaled the launch of two "dead loads" off the deck of the carrier.

92. George HW Bush attended the ceremony and became the first president in history to participate in the christening of his namesake ship.

93. George HW Bush participated in the event, placing his naval aviator wings underneath the island during the ceremony.

94. George HW Bush is the only aircraft carrier in the US Navy to combine the two technologies.

95. George HW Bush were modified to accommodate both the VCHT equipment and the elements of a marine sanitization device to treat the waste prior to discharge.

96. George HW Bush is the second carrier to have a modernized island, which includes a new radar tower, navigation system upgrades, communication systems enhancements, and armored windows.

97. George HW Bush became the US Navy's youngest pilot when he received his Naval Aviator wings and naval commission on 9 June 1943, three days before turning 19.

98. George HW Bush is the tenth and final Nimitz-class supercarrier of the United States Navy.

99. George HW Bush was awarded the Navy's Distinguished Flying Cross for this actions on that day.

100. George HW Bush was stationed in China as the head of the US liaison office in Beijing between 1974 and 1975.

101. George HW Bush had an early lead, but his opponent, Democratic vice president Al Gore, bounced back.