Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924, at the Wise Sanatorium in Plains, Georgia. He was the first US President that was born in a hospital.

His family had all been farmers for 350 years and no member of his father’s family had ever finished high school. Carter's childhood dream was "to go to the Naval Academy, get a college education, and serve in the U.S. Navy."

Carter was denied being selected high school class valedictorian because he skived off  to watch a movie.

Jimmy Carter married the former Eleanor Rosalynn Smith married on July 7, 1946  in Plains. He was 21, she was 18. The marriage canceled Rosalynn's plans to attend Georgia State College for Women, where she planned to study interior design.

The couple had four children: John William "Jack" (born 1947), James Earl "Chip" III (born 1950), Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" (born 1952), and Amy Lynn (born 1967).

Amy Carter has been arrested four times: three times for protesting against Apartheid and once for protesting against CIA recruitment in college.

He served in the navy as a physicist until 1953, when Carter took over the family peanut business.

Jimmy Carter has flat feet. Rumor has it he rolled his arches over a Coke bottle everyday until they were curved enough to pass the physical for the United States Naval Academy.

He suffered radioactive urine for six months after stopping a nuclear meltdown in 1952 while working with the US atomic submarine program

Jimmy Carter entered politics in 1962 as a Georgia state senator, and in 1970 was elected governor.

Initially given little chance of winning during his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter had an inauspicious debut,. In February 1975, the little-known governor from Georgia showed up in Des Moines, Iowa, to kick off his campaign for president. His team rented a hotel ballroom and bought enough food for 200 people. Only three showed up.

Jimmy Carter was considered such a long shot candidate that when he told his mother, Lillian, his plans to run for President, she asked him “President of what?”

While campaigning for US President, Jimmy Carter told The National Association of Record Merchandisers that he listened to Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin while Governor of Georgia.

Carter overcame 16 Democrats to become his party's nominee. He beat Gerald Ford on November 2, 1976 to become America’s first president from the Deep South since 1848. Carter won the popular vote by 50.1 percent to 48.0 percent for Ford, and received 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240.

He was the 39th president of the USA 1977–81.

When Jimmy Carter got elected President, he got a phone call from Elvis Presley. He recalled: "He was totally stoned and didn't know what he was saying. His sentences were almost incoherent".

On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft-dodgers and contentious objectors.

President Jimmy Carter gave his so-called malaise speech on July 15, 1979, where he characterized the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." He never actually used the word 'malaise.'

President Carter is believed to have once sent a jacket to his dry cleaner with the launch codes for America’s nuclear weapons left in one of the pockets.

Jimmy Carter had a Siamese cat during his presidency named Misty Malarky Ying Yang. Misty appears to have been devoted to Carter's daughter Amy,  even sleeping in her dollhouse.

Over the course of his presidency, Carter viewed more than 400 movies, both at the White House and Camp David.

Official portrait of President Jimmy Carter from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's Hall of Presidents, painted by artist Robert Templeton. Wikipedia Commons

Jimmy Carter is a speed reader (2000 wpm).

Both Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter, U.S. presidents, were peanut farmers at one time.

Only three Presidents graduated from the military academies: Grant, Eisenhower (West Point) and Carter (Annapolis).

From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity. A longtime Sunday school teacher, he is a deacon at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains. Carter also served for a time as a door-to-door missionary. He read his Bible daily while in office,  prayed several times a day, and professed that Jesus Christ was the driving force in his life.

In 2000, Carter severed his membership with the Southern Baptist Convention, saying the group's doctrines did not align with his Christian belief.

Jimmy Carter still lives in the same $167,000 house he built in Georgia in 1961 and shops at Dollar General.

Jimmy Carter has had the longest retirement of any former US President, eclipsing Herbert Hoover's record of 31 years 7 months 16 days on September 8, 2012. 

Carter has been a very active retired president. He has founded the Carter Center, a non-profit organization that works to resolve conflicts, promote democracy, and improve human rights around the world. He has also written several books and traveled extensively to promote peace and understanding.

Jimmy Carter doesn’t receive government retirement health benefits because he only worked for the government for four years, less than the five years required.

Sources Greatfacts.com, Mentalfloss.com Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2014. Helicon Publishing is division of RM