Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Tasmania.

Today's question is:
In what year was George Washington elected President?

8 comments:

Forest said...

I am going to go with 1792. I'm pretty sure the Constitution was crafted in 1789 and then mathematically I'll go with a year that gives us presidential elections when we have them.

Stopped Clock said...

Oh this is a good one. The obvious first answer that springs to mind is 1789 but then there's the question of, was he elected in 1789 in any real sense or was he just automatically inaugurated as president? I can think of several other possible answers, but I'm going to have to assume for the time being that this is a NON-trick question and that he was, in fact, elected in 1789.

nebraska girl said...

1780

Anonymous said...

1790?

W.R. Chandler said...

Elected: April 14, 1789
Inaugurated: April 30, 1789

I just taught those two facts to my 8th graders a couple of months ago!

Fritz J. said...

I got sidetracked and forgot to answer this last night. Anyhow, this one covers several points of election trivia such as it is the only presidential election to be held on an odd year. You could argue that the election started in an even year (Polls opened in Dec., 1788) but the polls closed in Jan. 1789, an odd year. So, the answer is 1789 if you go by when the polls closed, or 1788 if you go by when they opened. I don't remember the exact dates the polls opened and closed, but it was something like the middle of December, 1788 when they opened. I think the polls were open slightly less than a month, but I could very well be wrong on that. Washington's election is still the only U.S. presidential election in which the winner received all of the electoral votes.

Fritz J. said...

By the way, I would say that the year the polls closed is the year that should be used to answer your question because that is the year the votes were counted in.

Anonymous said...

1776 would be too easy, so I'll go with 1778.

On a side note, please try to record your lecture!