Richard Nixon. The dog featured in a televised address Nixon gave in 1952 when accusations of impropriety over his financial backing threatened to force his removal as Eisenhower’s running-mate. Questions over the backers funding his political campaigning raised possible questions of conflicts of interest and even corruption. Nixon made an emotional speech about his patriotism and modest way of life and said that there was one gift that he would not give up; a dog which his six-year-old daughter had named Checkers. The speech and its emotional appeal saved Nixon’s candidacy even though the dog had been a gift from a travelling salesman from Texas named Lou Carroll and could hardly have been classed as any kind of bribe.

It was made from the timbers of a ship called Resolute. President Rutherford Hayes received the desk, made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, which had explored the Arctic [in the early 1850s], as a gift from Queen Victoria. Resolute had been abandoned when trapped in ice in 1855, but returned to Britain the following year after being salvaged by an American whaler.

Two: Sarah Palin for the Republicans in 2008 and Geraldine Ferraro for the Democrats in 1984. Women have sought both parties’ nominations but failed to win enough votes, e.g. Shirley Chisholm (D) in 1972 and Margaret Chase Smith (R) in 1964. Numerous women have stood for president or vice president as the official candidates of minor parties, most notably in recent years the Green Party of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln. US Patent no 6,469 was registered in 1849 and was for expandable air chambers to be fitted to vessels “for the purpose of enabling their draught of water to be readily lessened to enable them to bass over bars, or through shallow water…” The invention stemmed from Lincoln’s own experience working and travelling on riverboats and on the Great Lakes earlier in his career, in the 1830s and 40s. As an attorney he also had considerable knowledge of patent law.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson was a representative from Virginia at the Continental Congress that adapted the Declaration and he and Adams were largely responsible for drawing it up. Adams became the United States’ second president in 1797. Jefferson was his vice president and later became third president in 1801.

Franklin D Roosevelt. Roosevelt wins by a very long margin, serving three full terms [from 1933 to 1945] and dying almost three months into his fourth, on 12 April 1945. Many more, including the other three presidents on the list, have served two full terms [of eight years], but Roosevelt’s record remains unbroken and will remain so until/unless the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1947 to limit the president to two terms in office, is reversed.

Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, in 1976. There was a 16-year gap between the debates partly because some contenders were scared by the negative effect that the debates with Kennedy had had on the fortunes of Nixon, who sweated visibly and looked unshaven.

Niece. Theodore Roosevelt was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt’s father’s brother. The Roosevelts were an old and wealthy New York family, and Eleanor married Franklin, a distant cousin, in 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away at the wedding, as her father had died some years before.