Did you know Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel ? (Jackson had a propensity to respond to aspersions cast on his honor with pistols. Historians estimate that "Old Hickory" may have participated in anywhere between 5 and 100 duels. When a man named Charles Dickinson called Jackson "a worthless scoundrel, a paltroon and a coward" in a local newspaper in 1806, the future president challenged his accuser to a duel. At the command, Dickinson fired and hit Jackson in the chest. The bullet missed Jackson's heart by barely more than an inch. In spite of the serious wound, Jackson stood his ground, raised his pistol and fired a shot that struck his foe dead. Jackson would carry around the bullet in his chest as well as another from a subsequent duel for the rest of his life.)

Did you know unbeknownst to Jackson, he married his wife before she had been legally divorced from her first husband ? (After moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1780s, Jackson fell in love with the unhappily married Rachel Donelson Robards. After she separated from her husband and believing that she was granted a legal divorce, Robards wed Jackson. In fact, however, the divorce had not yet been finalized, and her first husband accused her of adultery. Jackson legally remarried Robards in 1794, but the episode resurfaced in the nasty 1828 presidential campaign when Jackson's political opponents spread the gossip about his wife's alleged adultery. After Rachel Jackson died just weeks after her husband's election, the grieving president-elect believed the anguish caused by the slander hastened her demise.)

Did you know he adopted two Native American boys ? (Although he led campaigns against the Creeks and Seminoles during his military career and signed the Indian Removal Act as president, Jackson also adopted a pair of Native American infants during the Creek War in 1813 and 1814. Orphaned himself at age 14, Jackson sent back to Rachel an infant orphan named Theodore, who died early in 1814, and a child named Lyncoya, who was found in his dead mother's arms on a battlefield. "He is a savage that fortune has thrown in my hands," Jackson wrote to his wife about the boy. Lyncoya died of tuberculosis in 1828, months before Jackson's election.)

Did you know Jackson really did have a giant block of cheese in the White House ? (Andrew Jackson's "Big Block of Cheese" refers to a massive 1,400-pound cheddar cheese gifted to him by New York dairy farmers in 1835, which he displayed in the White House lobby for two years and then shared with the public at a massive, chaotic White House reception before leaving office in 1837.)

Did you know Andrew Jackson had a pet African Grey parrot, named Poll ? (It had to be removed from his funeral in 1845 because it wouldn't stop shouting profanities it learned from the former president.)