This set of interesting and informative facts will all pertain to the United States Congress and its legendary members. As we all know, the Congress is a bicameral legislature made up of a House of Representatives, where representatives are distributed amongst the states based on total population, and a Senate, where each state has two senators. So here are eight more facts about some of the greatest men to ever serve in Congress.
1. The current President Pro Tempore of the Senate and longest serving Senator is Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. He is currently 87 years old and is expected to
run for a record tenth term for his Senate seat. He has been a senator from Hawaii since 1963 and was a representative in the house four years before that.2. Strom Thurmond was the only Senator to serve until he was 100 years old. He ran for U.S. President in 1948 and became the Governor of South Carolina, followed by 8 sequential terms in the Senate starting in 1954 and serving until 2003.
3. Only two U.S. Presidents have returned to Congress after leaving the presidency. Those two presidents were John Quincy Adams, who returned to the House of Representatives for eight terms and Andrew Johnson, who returned to the Senate for 1 year before he died.
4. Charles Sumner is the only congressman to ever get beaten up in the Senate chamber. Representative Preston Brooks defended the honor of his uncle,
Senator Andrew Butler, after Sumner made fun of and humiliated him. Brooks beat Sumner over the head with his cane and Sumner almost bled to death.5. The first woman ever to be sworn into the Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton. She was the U.S. Senator from Georgia whose term ended after one day. She was a temporary replacement for a Senator who prematurely died.
6. The longest ever serving woman Senator is Barbara Mikulski. She is and has been the current Senator of Maryland since 1987 and still holds the seat today. She has been in office for 9,214 days.
7. The first African American to ever serve in Congress was Hiram Revels. Revels served in the United States Senate from 1870 until 1876, ironically representing Mississippi.
8. The first Hispanic/Latino to ever serve in Congress was Romualdo Pacheco. He represented California in the United State House of Representatives in non-sequential terms between 1877 and 1883.
I hope these facts are interesting enough for you all. I tried to make them a bit more obscure than usual so that you all will learn something from it. Anyway, I will have another new random facts set coming up soon. I hope this one was enjoyable and edifying.