Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States. He was born on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He was a Republican lawyer from New England who climbed the ladder of Massachusetts politics, becoming the state's 48th governor; his response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight as a man of decisive action. The next year, Coolidge was elected the country's 29th vice president and succeeded the presidency upon the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, Coolidge gained a reputation as a small-government conservative with a taciturn personality and dry sense of humor that earned him the nickname "Silent Cal."