click the image to see it in its entirety at a higher resolution
And some of the fun (or not-so-fun in some instances) facts:
1) Panama was the first foreign country to be visited by a US president.
2) Panama was the second country visited by a US president.
3) The Panama's visting duo were Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
4) Woodrow Wilson's international foray was to Europe (first president to visit Europe. First president to receive an audience with the Pope.)
5) Of our closest neighbors, Mexico was visited before Canada. William Howard Taft's other foreign trip was to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in October of 1909. Nearly fourteen years later, in July of 1923 (and only days before his fatal heart attack) Warren G. Harding made the first presidential visit to Canada. Vancouver in British Colombia to be specific, and was actually only hours away from dying there--which would certainly have been a presidential first!
6) President Calvin Coolidge left the shores of the United States only once during his presidency, but he made it an historical doozie: CUBA! The only president to go there, duh!
7) In the recent past a presidential visit to Iran is seen as unthinkable, yet presidents have gone there and the first was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was also the first to visit Haiti. And he put the United Kingdom on his frequent flyer card with a record 18 visits and never once set foot on the mother land with visits exclusively to her colonies from North American and Caribbean to African protectorates.
8) Harry Truman had no taste for foreign travel. In his two terms as president, he only visited 6 foreign countries in 4 trips: #1 Europe and the Potsdam conference took him to the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany. He had states visits to Mexico and Canada, and in September of 1947 he spent a week in Brazil.
8) Of course, Richard M. Nixon was the first president to visit China, but he was also the only president to visit Yugoslavia. A fact, that remains safely ensconced on the granite wall of failed nation states.
9) There have been 18 visits to the Vatican City for audiences with popes. George W. Bush had the most with 5.
10) Bill Clinton was often criticized for his busy agenda of foreign travel, but he comes in second to George W. Bush who visted 140 foreign nations to Clinton's 133.
11) However, per capita, George W. Bush's father was no slouch either. George H. W. Bush put 60 foreign nations on his dance card in only 4 years.
12) President Barack Obama looked at a world where presidential first visits was not an easy or obvious landscape. After, all, George W. Bush snagged Mongolia and Qatar. Bill Clinton was a real piggy-wurtzer on the topic with first visits to former members of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union like Belarus, Ukraine (twice), Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (thrice), Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. His boyhood stomping grounds of Indonesia? Gone! Thank you, Richard M. Nixon! But he still managed to eke out a place among the "Firsts." He was first to visit Burma and first to visit Cambodia.
13) finally, when you look at the map, there is no way to not wonder about the most UN-visited continent: Africa. Africa has as of today 54 nations/states. The first nation to officially recognize our nation AS a nation was an African nation: Morocco. In the 238 years of our Republic, only 6 of our Presidents have bothered to go there. Neither Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush did. The first to even visit non-Moslem, sub-Saharan Africa was Jimmy Carter in March-April of 1978 with his two nation visit to Liberia and Nigeria. Tomorrow is the 36th anniversary of that historic event. After him Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have visited the sub-Sarahan parts of this seminal continent. All together 16 of the 54 nations have been visited.
No comments:
Post a Comment