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President
Roosevelt hosts Prime Minister Churchill at a
White House war conference, 1943.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library |
- The Marquis
de Lafayette was one of the first notable international
guests of the White House. President John Quincy Adams
honored the hero of the American and French Revolutions
with a party on the Marquis de Lafayette's 68th
birthday in 1825. The square across Pennsylvania Avenue
would later be named to commemorate Lafayette.
- In 1860, President James Buchanan hosted the first
envoys from Imperial Japan. Two royal princes and
a dozen noblemen came with many servants. They carried
a box containing a commercial treaty that would be
exchanged for similar documents from the United States.
The first ruling king to visit the White House was
King David Kalakaua of the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).
President Ulysses S. Grant hosted him in 1874. Royal
food testers sampled the White House dinner for the
kingThe king and queen of England came to Washington,
D.C., in 1939 and stayed one night at the White House.
It was the first trip to the United States by a British
monarch.
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived secretly
at the White House just before Christmas in 1941.
During his 24-day stay the staff had to adjust to
his eccentricities. Chief Usher J.B. West recalled,
"We got used to his 'jumpsuit,' the extraordinary
one-piece uniform he wore every day, but the servants
never quite got over seeing him naked in his room
when they'd go up to serve brandy. It was the jumpsuit
or nothing. In his room, Mr. Churchill wore no clothes
at all most of the time during the day.
- Charles de Gaulle met with Harry Truman at the
White House in 1945
- The first Pope to visit the White House was Pope
John Paul II, who came during the Carter presidency
in 1979
- Jimmy Carter brought President Anwar Sadat of Egypt
and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel to the
White House to sign an historic peace treaty between
the two nations in 1978
- President Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
signed the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty,
the first arms control agreement in history that reduced
the number of nuclear weapons held by both countries,
in 1987 in the East Room
- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat celebrate the signing of an historic
peace treaty by their representatives on
September 13, 1993. President Clinton, numerous dignataries, and
3,000 visitors joined the event on the south
lawn of the White House.
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