Martin Van Buren died on this day 161 years ago, aged 79.
- Van Buren was the first US president to be born after the country declared independence- he was born in 1782.
- Van Buren was the only US president whose first language wasn't English; he primarily spoke Dutch, learning English while attending school.
- Van Buren formed a law firm with his half-brother in 1803, and would be elected to the New York Senate in 1812. He became the state's attorney general in 1815, and would be elected to the US Senate in 1820. In 1828, he would be elected the governor of New York. Shortly after his election, the incoming Jackson administration asked him to be the Secretary of State, which he accepted (his term of 43 days is the shortest of any New York governor).
- When John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President in 1832, Andrew Jackson selecting him as his running mate that year. Van Buren would be elected president in 1836, largely thanks to the Whig Party nomination being split between four candidates.
- Van Buren's presidency is best known for the Amistad Supreme Court case (which ruled in favor of slaves who mutinied on a slave ship), violence between Americans and Canadians on the border, and the Panic of 1837 financial crisis. Because of the latter, he lost the 1840 election in a landslide to William Henry Harrison- and also lost due to some of the first political advertisements from the Harrison-Tyler ticket:
- Van Buren would run for president again in 1848 as a member of the antislavery Free Soil Party, receiving no electoral votes but 10% of the popular vote.
- Van Buren was bedridden with pneumonia in late 1861 and early 1862 (definitely would've been on the list had it existed back then), and died from an asthma attack complicated by heart failure. He outlived four of his successors (Harrison, Tyler, Polk and Taylor) and lived to see eight presidents succeed him, the most of any US president (Jimmy Carter comes in second with 7).