Former President Jimmy Carter became the first president to celebrate his 100th birthday on Tuesday.
When Carter was born, a loaf of bread cost 8 cents and the sale of alcohol was illegal under Prohibition. In 1977, he entered the Oval Office, the same year Elvis Presley died and the minimum wage was $2.30. Now he remains in hospice care in the same small town where he was born exactly a century ago.
Here are a few more fascinating facts about the country’s 39th president from the Washington Examiner.
Birth
Carter was the first president to be born in a hospital, even though his rural hometown had fewer than 500 inhabitants. On Oct. 1, 1924, he was ushered into the world at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a registered nurse. Three years after Carter’s birth, Lillian Carter helped deliver his future wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
The rural southwest hospital in Plains, Georgia, was later renamed in Lillian Carter’s honor. It continues to operate as the Lillian G. Carter Nursing Center.
“Jimmy”
The 39th president was christened James Earl Carter. He was rarely called by his given name, however, preferring instead his famous nickname: “Jimmy.” Carter consequently became the first president to use a nickname while in the White House, even choosing to go by “Jimmy” as he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1977.
Other presidents, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), Theodore Roosevelt (TR), and Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), were popularly known by their nicknames. However, Carter remains the only president to officially go by a nickname for all his presidential duties.
“Billy Beer”
Journalists covering Jimmy Carter often used a Plains gas station as their headquarters. But it wasn’t just any gas station. Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy Carter, operated the business throughout the 1970s. Decades later, the Plains Better Hometown program turned the once-abandoned building into the Billy Carter Museum.
Before his death in 1988, Billy Carter also gained attention for promoting “Billy Beer” during his brother’s presidency. He marketed alcohol for the Falls City Brewing Company before it folded in 1978. “Brewed expressly for and with the personal approval of one of AMERICA’s all-time Great Beer Drinkers — Billy Carter,” an endorsement on the beer cans read.
Energy
Carter was one of the most environmentally progressive presidents to occupy the White House. He signed legislation protecting more than 100 million acres of land in Alaska shortly before he left office. He pushed for green tax credits for solar panels to heat water in homes. He established one of the signature federal agencies we now know as the Department of Energy.
He even installed 32 solar panels on top of the White House shortly before he left office.
“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people,” he said. The solar panels were removed in 1986 for roof repairs and never reinstalled.
A new tradition
Carter launched one of the most popular traditions enjoyed by inauguration viewers each election cycle. After he took the oath of office in 1977, Carter became the first president to walk Pennsylvania Avenue as part of the inaugural parade. His predecessors had chosen to remain in their presidential limousines during the festivities. The small-town Georgia native decided to do things differently.
Excerpts from his diary record that Carter wished to illustrate his “confidence in … in the people of our country” and “a reduction in the imperial status of the president and his family” by walking in the parade. To this day, people across the country tune in to watch newly inaugurated presidents take the historic mile-and-a-half lap from the Capitol to the White House.
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Carter entered home hospice care in February 2023. He has defied the odds for roughly 19 months and has outlived his wife of 77 years, who died last November.
The 39th president now has 15 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.
