SEPTEMBER 15

On this date in 1857, William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, was born right here in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He went to Woodward High School before attending Yale College.  He got his advanced degree at the Cincinnati Law School and worked at a local newspaper while in school.

Taft had quite a civic career.  After school, he was named an assistant prosecutor for Hamilton County; then a judge on the District Court based in Cincinnati.  

President Benjamin Harrison named him the Solicitor General of the United States.  During this period he was named the first Dean of the University of Cincinnati Law School and taught constitutional law there.

President William McKinley appointed him Governor-General of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.  President Theodore Roosevelt named him Secretary of War and later, Provisional Governor of Cuba.
 
Eight years after his four-year stint as President, he was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and served for almost nine years.

Taft died in 1930.  He was not a poster boy for physical fitness or good eating and drinking habits.  At his peak during the last year of his presidency,  he carried about 340 pounds on his 5'11" frame.

O.O