Presidents’ Day in the US

2024 · VOA Learning English

This speaker is a general-american model. Each line below can be recorded and scored against it.

Transcript

1. The third Monday of February is known as Presidents’ Day in the United States.

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2. For nearly 100 years, America honored its first president, George Washington on February 22. That was his birthday.

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3. But the date was not a national holiday until 1968. That year, the U.S.

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4. Congress passed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The measure meant that some public holidays would always fall on a Monday.

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5. Today, the country honors its first president on the third Monday in February -- and not on Washington’s real birthday.

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6. The holiday is now commonly called Presidents’ Day. Many say it also honors Abraham Lincoln ’s birthday.

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7. The nation’s 16th president was born on February 12. The federal government, however, still recognizes the holiday as “Washington’s Birthday.”

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8. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act gives workers a three-day weekend. It also gives shops and marketers a chance to have special Presidents’ Day sales.

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9. At 78 years old, he became the oldest elected president. The man he beat was the previous record holder, Donald J.

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10. Trump He took office at the age of 70 in 2017.

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11. Biden and Trump are leading candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations for the 2024 presidential race.

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12. They will likely face each other again later this year for the presidency. As the first billionaire president, Trump replaced John F.

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13. Kennedy the 35th president, as the richest man to serve as president. Kennedy still holds the record for the youngest person to be elected president.

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14. He was 43 when he took office. Kennedy is also the youngest president to die in office.

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15. He was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas. He was 46 years old.

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16. Another presidential assassination put the youngest person in the office of the president. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt then the vice president, became president at the age of 42.

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17. He took office after William McKinley the 25th president, was shot and killed in Buffalo, New York.

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18. The first president to die in office, though, was William Henry Harrison The country’s ninth president only served 32 days, the shortest time of any president.

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19. Another Roosevelt holds the record for the longest time in office. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president.

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20. He held office for 4,422 days. After his death, the 22nd Amendment was passed.

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21. It limited a person to two four-year terms as president.

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22. But they may not know exactly how they were related. Here it goes: Franklin Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt was also his fifth cousin once removed.

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23. And Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, was Eleanor’s uncle. That makes the two presidents distant relatives.

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24. But they were not the first relatives to both serve as president. That title belongs to the Adamses.

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25. John Adams was America’s second president. His son, John Quincy Adams was elected as the nation’s sixth president.

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26. The Bushes are the other father-son presidential pair George Herbert Walker Bush was elected as the 41st president.

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27. His son, George W. Bush was the country’s 43rd president.

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28. Not everyone can run for president. The U.S. Constitution says a person must be at least 35 years old.

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29. A person must also have lived “within the United States” for at least 14 years. And they must be a “natural-born citizen.”

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30. But the meaning of “natural-born citizen” is not exactly clear. People read the rules in different ways.

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31. By some reasoning, the first “natural-born” American president was not George Washington or John Adams. It was Martin Van Buren the eighth president.

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32. He was born in 1782, six years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

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33. All seven presidents before Van Buren, and William Henry Harrison, the 9th president, technically were not “natural-born” citizens.

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34. They were born before 1776 when the American states were still British colonies. I'm Ashley Thompson.

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