Can you name the Presidents With No Active Military Service?

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Military-free Presidents Quiz

by Ben

Created Jan 20, 2009 in History
Featured Jan 20, 2009
Game Plays 86,700

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	davidr:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 18:05 GMT	14 points
	I played it as a guessing game but the list of answers is educational. :-)

	[Deleted]:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 18:07 GMT	13 points
	Missed the ones before and after our heftiest president. Nice idea for a quiz.

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	Spammo:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 18:29 GMT	69 points
	SRG: We get it. There are people not from the United States. We don't need to be reminded of it every quiz.

	zalagreensbury:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 18:54 GMT	5 points
	ah, 10 out of 14, I just ran out of time.

	davidr:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 18:57 GMT	23 points
	@SRG: Yes. Assuming that the writer is American, it's perfectly reasonable to use `our', even though these people are not my President or, I assume, yours. As an aside, there are African languages with different versions of `us' that mean `me and a bunch of people including you', `me and a bunch of people not including you', `me and you' and `me and another person who is not you.' Sometimes, I think those would be useful in English, too.

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	jzev:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 19:29 GMT	9 points
	This is an interesting quiz, were there any presidents who were the children of immigrants, i.e. first generation americans??

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	Lindsay:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 19:44 GMT	2 points
	Fun & interesting quiz! Managed to get them all in under a minute with some very lucky guessing based on knowing the order of the presidents, so that I didn't have to waste guesses on ones that wouldn't fit in between those I did know.

	swellwrench:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:01 GMT	10 points
	Obama is a first-generation American on his father's side. I don't know if there have been any others, although Martin van Buren did not grow up speaking English (he spoke Dutch), which is somewhat close I suppose.

	Bretzky:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:15 GMT	8 points
	Jzev: Andrew Jackson's parents were Scotch-Irish immigrants from Ireland. Jackson was born about two or three years after his parents arrived in America.

	TannerNation:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:16 GMT	6 points
	We're counting GWB as having had military experience? Really?

	Drewskixc:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:27 GMT	1 point
	I was surprised at a few of the presidents not being on this list. I'm not a history buff, but Carter doesn't seem like the soldier type. Anybody know what branch he served in?

	Daniel:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:32 GMT	10 points
	He was in the navy and went to the naval academy

	TallKool1:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:37 GMT	15 points
	Does it strike anyone else as ironic that SPOILER Jefferson, Wilson and Roosevelt are on this list and yet figured prominently as wartime presidents or figures?

	DLJessup:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:40 GMT	5 points
	@Jzev: Both of Andrew Jackson's parents were born in Ireland, and Andrew Jackson himself was born an British subject (since he was born before the American Revolution). Andrew Johnson's father may have been born in England; records are unclear. Chester Arthur's father was born in Ireland. Woodrow Wilson's mother was born in England.

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	[Deleted]:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 20:59 GMT	12 points
	that would be true of every president before Obama as well. The president is Commander in Chief of the military - thatr doesn't mean he has military experience though.

	Tom:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 21:00 GMT	9 points
	Carter was a submarine commander before becoming a gentleman farmer in Plains, Georgia.

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	David655321:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 21:33 GMT	3 points
	LBJ flew as an observer on 1 bombing mission in the Pacific. That's setting a pretty low bar for "active military service."

	Bees:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 22:00 GMT	60 points
	Imagine if Taft WERE in the military. It would be like the boulder scene from Indiana Jones.

	davebesag:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 22:12 GMT	5 points
	Well as a Brit I got all of them eventually. Agree that it is rather a guessing game. Would be harder if they were not listed in any set order.

	Lindsay:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 22:19 GMT	4 points
	Jzev: Chester Alan Arthur may have very well been an immigrant himself - it's questionable as to whether he actually was born in Canada or Vermont

	davidr:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 22:46 GMT	7 points
	@Paul: U.S. Presidents are major figures in world history; Bush and Obama are major figures in current affairs. This quiz and the Bush-Obama quiz are about the U.S.A. but they're perfectly accessible to everyone else. It's a bit of a shame that the other two quizzes are both on American sports but, even so, two out of four have international appeal, which seems pretty fair to me.

	davidr:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 23:01 GMT	0 points
	@David655321: LBJ was a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve; GWB was a First Lieutenant in the Air National Guard. Is there much of a difference between the two?

	TannerNation:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 23:06 GMT	8 points
	the complaint that this is america-centric rings kind of hollow, considering america has been one of the major world powers for much of its history, and that many of the presidents before then are pretty famous in their own right. it really isn't any more 'america-centric' than a list of roman emperors or french or british monarchs are 'centric' of their respective countries- it's world history. it's not as if you're being asked to name the rulers of guatamela or something, where you'd have to either have lived there or had a specialist's education to know it. a well educated person ought to know this stuff (i will say that rulers of nations like australia, denmark, etc are a bit less world history, and are indeed australia- or denmark-centric).

	swellwrench:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 23:06 GMT	4 points
	Today's also a pretty US-centric day... Does anyone else think this quiz is kind of awkwardly titled? Although it's wordy, I think "US Presidents without military service" would be better.

	davidr:	Jan 20th, 2009 at 23:37 GMT	-4 points
	@Balla: Yeah, the title's a bit awkward but your suggestion is too long. A short title is needed both for captioning and for the lists of popular games that appear in various places around the site. I can't think of anything short that's better than the title used.

	trotsky:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 00:29 GMT	6 points
	@davidr: I'd say there's a big difference between LBJ's service and GWB's, that being that LBJ showed up for most of his.

	jzev:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 00:49 GMT	2 points
	Thanks to Brett Champion. I'm a Phillies Phan too

	drza:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 00:52 GMT	-1 points
	I had 13 with about 20 seconds to go,and got Polk at the buzzer...at least I thought. Apparently you cant answer at 0:00,when i hit the "K" button his name showed up and I prematurely celebrated :(

	davidr:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 00:53 GMT	0 points
	@trotsky: Well, there is that but the person I was following up to had questioned LBJ's service rather than GWB's.

	klogg:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 02:23 GMT	3 points
	dang, missed harding hoover and coolidge. how could i forget such hereos hehe.

	Edge:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 02:51 GMT	2 points
	Might have been better to have the Presidents in alphabetical rather than chronological order. I only actually knew a few of them, but by guessing in the gaps between Presidents, I eventually got all 14.

	grant:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 03:56 GMT	5 points
	@John2: if that were true, this quiz would be pointless, because every president before him was Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The point of this quiz, however, is to guess the presidents who served before becoming president. If we considered Obama as serving in the military for simply being President, the other 43 presidents would be on, as well, rendering the quiz pointless.

	grant:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 04:10 GMT	2 points
	@grant: rather, the point of the quiz is to guess the presidents who DID NOT serve in the military before becoming president. :)

	Joe_Ball:	Jan 21st, 2009 at 05:13 GMT	-1 points
	@davidr: Non Military Presidents?

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