November 5, 1912: Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States. The Governor of New Jersey and the former President of Princeton University, he remains the only New Jersey-based politician ever to become President, although he was born in Virginia and raised in Georgia and South Carolina.
He wins because the Republican Party is split between the conservative wing, led by incumbent President William Howard Taft, and the progressive wing, led by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who believes that Taft and his allies have betrayed what he tried to do from 1901 to 1909.
Wilson won 40 of the 48 States then in the Union -- New Mexico and Arizona having gained Statehood that very year, and voting for President for the 1st time. Had the votes for TR and the votes for Taft been combined in each State, Wilson would have won Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia -- 13 States, all of them Southern, for a total of 149 Electoral Votes, while the Republican nominee would have won 382. But Taft's conservatism and TR's ego split the GOP, and Wilson got in.
Although Wilson has become identified with Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived before entering the White House; and elsewhere in Washington, where he lived after leaving, his birthplace was in Staunton, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the western part of the State (not to be confused with the separate State of West Virginia), and the house where he was born, and a now-connected house next door, have been converted into his Presidential Library, which opened on January 1, 1990.
The bridge carrying Interstate 95 over the Potomac, at the southern end of the District of Columbia, is the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. And, on the Virginia side, in Arlington, a major thoroughfare is named Wilson Boulevard. High schools have been named for Wilson in Camden, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Portsmouth, Virginia; Beckley, West Virginia; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles and Long Beach, California; and Tacoma, Washington.
The USS Woodrow Wilson was a submarine in service from 1963 to 1994. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars opened in Washington in 1968.
There are high schools named for Wilson in Los Angeles, in neighboring Long Beach, in Dallas, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and in Virginia and West Virginia. The Wilson High in Dallas is the only high school in the country to graduate 2 winners of the Heisman Trophy: Davey O'Brien of Texas Christian University in 1938, and Tim Brown of Notre Dame in 1987.
But Wilson's racism has led to several cities taking his name off schools, replacing them with the names of black leaders: August Martin in New York's Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, Jackson-Reed in D.C., Ida B. Wells-Barnett in Portland, and Silas in Tacoma.
Also named Woodrow Wilson High School, but no longer: Eastside High in Camden, New Jersey; Harry S Truman High in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania; Manor High in Portsmouth, Virginia; Dakota High in Fargo, North Dakota; and, outright closed, in Middletown, Connecticut; Youngstown, Ohio; and San Francisco.
Statues of Wilson are more common in Europe, where he's more popular than in America, including in Poznan, Poland; Prague, Czechia; and Tirana, Albania. A Wilson statue was removed from the campus of the University of Texas in Austin. But the "Presidential City" display in Rapid City, South Dakota still has him on display.
In 1934, a gold certificate bearing Wilson's portrait and the value of $100,000 was issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It was a one-time thing, to help stabilize the economy during the Great Depression. It was never put into circulation, only 12 are known to survive, and it is illegal for private citizens to possess them.
Wilson remains the last President born in Virginia, and the only one to represent New Jersey in politics.
Wilson, in 1944, was the 1st color film about a President. Alexander Knox starred, with Ruth Nelson as 1st wife Ellen, Geraldine Fitzgerald as 2nd wife Edith, Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life) as private secretary Joseph Tumulty, a young Vincent Price as son-in-law and Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, and Cedric Hardwicke as Wilson's Congressional nemesis, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
Among the other actors who have played Wilson are: Earl Lee in The Story of Will Rogers in 1952, Whit Bissell in Profiles in Courage in 1965, Frank Forsyth in Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969, Backstairs at the White House in 1979, Josef Sommer in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in 1993, Bob Gunton in Iron Jawed Angels in 2004, Bryan Scott Johnson in Timeless in 2018, and Ian Kelly in The King's Man in 2021.
Bainbridge Colby, Secretary of State for the last year of the Administration, was the last surviving member of the Wilson Cabinet, living until 1950.
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Like all modern U.S. Election Days, November 5, 1912 was a Tuesday, so no football; and November, so no baseball. And neither the NBA nor the NHL had been founded yet. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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