SEATTLE — The first president to ever visit Seattle was Rutherford B. Hayes, back in 1880, before we were even a state.
We've had plenty of presidential visitors since then, including William H. Taft, who popped into the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and Harry Truman, who did a little fishin' on Puget Sound and plopped down in a now-famous chair in the governor's office.
JFK opened the Seattle World's Fair by phone in April, 1962. But he skipped a planned visit to the fair's closing six months later with a "cold," later revealed to be a ruse. Turned out he was secretly dealing with the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Warren G. Harding wasn't faking it when he took ill during a speech at Husky Stadium. Less than a month later, he was dead.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had family in Seattle, so he was here a lot. A little piece of his legacy still is. His personal train car is now part of the Orient Express restaurant in SoDo.
And who loves donuts? Barack Obama. He bought a couple dozen during a midterm campaign stop at Seattle's Top Pot Donuts back in 2010.
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