Since it's an election year and a historic one at that. (For obvious reason) And since Vice-President Dick Cheney isn't running for president it got me to thinking whatever happened to some of the more famous/infamous Vice-Presidents. In particularly, where the hell is Dan Quayle?

Now I need to say that Dan Quayle's name popped into my head after listening to Tupac's "Strictly For My N.I.G.G.A.Z."(Never Ignorant In Getting Goals Accomplished for the acronym challenged) CD. So being the semi-history buff that I am (seeing as how I was an inadvertent double major in school and yep, history just happened to be one of them) I started to think about how many Vice-Presidents actually went on to be president. After racking my brain for about a minute I came up with a total of 14. Yeah we've had 43 Presidents, a total of 48 Vice-Presidents, and only 14 of them have gone on to become Presidents

Boy talk about a lot of useless knowledge floating around in your head. By the way, only a true egg-head would know that fact and yes I checked my number after I counted and it was right.

On a side note I can't name all the Vice-Presidents, but I could remember the ones that went on to become President. Don't know why, I just did. But I digress...

Since in the event of an un-timely death or the resignation of a President, the Vice-President assumes the duties of the president,(Quick how many Presidents have died in office? Name them?) I decided to list the last 13 Vice-Presidents (included Cheney) to illustrate the fact that being Vice-President is the most powerless and obscure position in the federal government. And to show how Vice-Presidents seem to disappear into oblivion, with the exception of a few: Truman, Nixon, Johnson, Ford and George H.W. Bush. Three of the five on that list became president because of a death(FDR and JFK) or impeachment/resignation (Nixon) or whatever you want to call it. As for those that didn't go one to become president, what did they do with themselves? I don't know the answer to that question and since I'm not required, I'm not gonna do the research on that. (You can if you'd like to and feel free to post it in the comment section.) I will however give the list of the "almost somebodies." Other than the five I've already listed of course...

Alben W. Barkley (Truman)
1949-1953

Hubert H. Humphrey (Lyndon B. Johnson)
1965-1969

Spiro T. Agnew (Richard Nixon)
1969-1973 - resigned on October 10, 1973 (On a seperate charge 8 months before Nixon)

Nelson A. Rockefeller (Gerald Ford)
1974-1977

Walter F. Mondale (Jimmy Carter)
1977-1981

J. Danforth Quayle (George H.W. Bush)
1989-1993

Albert A. Gore, Jr. (William Clinton)
1993-2001

Richard B. Cheney (George W. Bush)
2001-2009 He won't be President because he's not running.

So there you have it... a little bit of the useless knowledge I have a floating around in my head. Oh yeah the answer to the question I asked is eight Presidents have died in office. I must admit I only up with six. I'm just saying I can't know everything.

Here's the list: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Abram Garfield, William McKinley, Jr., Warren Gamaliel Harding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.