VOA · U.S. History
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed6:162024-02-14public domain
The U.S. History series (The Making of a Nation) tells American history from the colonial era onward in VOA Special English: slow speed, limited vocabulary, long-form storytelling. Generations of learners have used this exact series to break through intermediate listening.
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01The third Monday of February is known as President's Day in the United States.
02For nearly 100 years, America honored its first president, George Washington, on February 22nd.
03That was his birthday.
04But the date was not a national holiday until 1968.
05That year, the U.S.
06Congress passed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
07The measure meant that some public holidays would always fall on a Monday.
08Today, the country honors its first president on the third Monday in February, and not on Washington's real birthday.
09The holiday is now commonly called President's Day.
10Many say it also honors Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
11The nation's 16th president was born on February 12th.
12The federal government, however, still recognizes the holiday as Washington's birthday.
13The Uniform Monday Holiday Act gives workers a three-day weekend.
14It also gives shops and marketers a chance to have special President's Day sales.
15In January of 2021, Joe Biden made history when he took the oath of office as the 46th president of the United States.
16At 78 years old, he became the oldest elected president.
17The man he beat was the previous record holder, Donald J.
18Trump.
19He took office at the age of 70 in 2017.
20Biden and Trump are leading candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations for the 2024 presidential race.
21They will likely face each other again later this year for the presidency.
22As the first billionaire president, Trump replaced John F.
23Kennedy, the 35th president, as the richest man to serve as president.
24Kennedy still holds the record for the youngest person to be elected president.
25He was 43 when he took office.
26Kennedy is also the youngest president to die in office.
27He was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
28He was 46 years old.
29Another presidential assassination put the youngest person in office for the president.
30In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, then the vice president, became president at the age of 42.
31He took office after William McKinley, the 25th president, was shot and killed in Buffalo, New York.
32The first president to die in office, though, was William Henry Harrison.
33The country's ninth president only served 32 days, the shortest time of any president.
34Another Roosevelt holds the record for the longest time in office.
35Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president.
36He held office for 4,422 days.
37After his death, the 22nd Amendment was passed.
38It limited a person to two four-year terms as president.
39Most Americans know that the two Roosevelts were related, but they may not know exactly how they were related.
40Here it goes.
41Franklin Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was also his fifth cousin once removed.
42And Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, was Eleanor's uncle.
43That makes the two presidents distant relatives.
44But they were not the first relatives to both serve as president.
45That title belongs to the Adamses.
46John Adams was America's second president.
47His son, John Quincy Adams, was elected as the nation's sixth president.
48The Bushes are the other father-son presidential pair.
49George Herbert Walker Bush was elected as the 41st president.
50His son, George W.
51Bush, was the country's 43rd president.
52Not everyone can run for president.
53The U.S.
54Constitution says a person must be at least 35 years old.
55A person must also have lived within the United States for at least 14 years.
56And they must be a natural-born citizen.
57But the meaning of natural-born citizen is not exactly clear.
58People read the rules in different ways.
59By some reasoning, the first natural-born American president was not George Washington or John Adams.
60It was Martin Van Buren, the eighth president.
61He was born in 1782, six years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
62All seven presidents before Van Buren and William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, technically were not natural-born citizens.
63They were born before 1776, when the American states were still British colonies.
64I'm Ashley Thompson.
65I'm Ashley Thompson.
66I'm Ashley Thompson.
67I'm Ashley Thompson.
68I'm Ashley Thompson.
69I'm Ashley Thompson.
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