13.12. 1799 George Washington died

George Washington was the first American president to resolve a protracted political dispute. When he dealt with people, he was polite, looking them in the eye as he talked. He died in 1799 when he caught a cold while riding his horse.

He had a muscular build, 188 centimetres tall, with brown hair tinged with red, blue-grey eyes, a prominent nose and prominent cheekbones. His appearance was marred by the scars left by smallpox and his rotten teeth, for which he tried to keep his mouth closed as much as possible.

When dealing with people, he was polite, looked them in the eye when talking to them, but kept his distance, and, as an excellent horse rider, he was "as good as nailed to the saddle". Dancing, on the other hand, was his very weak point, a fact which was not altered by the fact that at the age of fifteen he had invested three shillings and ninepence in dancing. That amount could buy about nine kilos of flour at the time.

"George Washington was not one of those men who turned to women and tried to attract their attention at any cost. On the contrary, it can be said that he was wary of them, so they were few and far between in his life," writes Stanislava Jarolímková in her book World Personalities as You May Not Know Them.

He met his first wife at the age of 16. She was 18-year-old Sally, the wife of one of his friends, and today it is said to be difficult to say what attracted him to her, because she was far from beautiful. Perhaps he liked the environment in which she lived better, but in the end she passed through his life like a dream. At the age of twenty, he was attracted to sixteen-year-old Betsy Fauntleroy, who was the daughter of one of Virginia's richest and most influential men. She caught his eye because George was looking for a woman who would bring him a dowry so he could buy his own land. But he was a pauper in the eyes of Betsy's father.

He met his future wife in the house when he went to the Virginia capital of Williamsburg to see a doctor to check on his health because he was afraid of tuberculosis. He was debilitated by dysentery, so he took short breaks during the trip. He made one such stop at the home of an acquaintance at whose house he met a plump twenty-seven-year-old widow named Martha Dandridge Custis, called Patsy.

"She was small in stature, big-eyed, and tried not to talk much. She was afraid she might say something inappropriate. She described herself as an old-fashioned Virginia housewife. But Washington liked her. Moreover, he discovered that she was well off financially," Jarolimková writes.

Washington had a great political future ahead of him. In February 1789, voters unanimously elected him president. Four years later, he sat in the presidential chair for a second time. But he had major political disputes to resolve. He died in 1799 when he caught a cold while riding his horse.

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