As you may have noticed while walking around campus today, you don’t have the day off.

As you also may have noticed, other people do.

Why, you may ask, is it that we are stuck in classrooms while others are enjoying the weather and some free time?

ASU for some reason (we’re sure it’s a good one) doesn’t give us a day off for Presidents Day. Maybe it’s the entrepreneurial spirit in ASU that gives us the desire to work more than the state and federal governments (although that may not be as hard as it seems) — or maybe it’s because having both Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents Day off is considered too much free time.

Either way, we think there is a valid case for having the day off — but since you don’t have 24 hours to brush up on your presidential fun facts, we’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of some interesting things we found.

Presidents Day falls between the birthdays of two of the most famous and influential presidents in American history: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Both were tall, but Lincoln beats out 6-foot-2-inch Washington and every other president at 6 feet 4 inches — add in the stovepipe hat and there’s no competition.

Lincoln and Washington also fall one-two for the best presidents, according to the C-Span 2009 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. Also in the top 10 are distant cousins Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Coming in last is James Buchanan followed by Andrew Johnson. George W. Bush falls low in the rankings, as does John Tyler.

Four presidents were assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. Six more survived attempts on their lives: Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Tyler, the tenth president, was never elected to the office. He was, however, the president with the most children (15), and his second wife started the tradition of playing “Hail to the Chief” when he entered state functions. (A short man, Tyler’s wife wanted him to be noticed when he entered the room). Not bad for a president whose death was ignored by the federal government as a sworn enemy of the United States — when the Civil War started, he joined the Confederacy.

Chester A. Arthur, the twenty-first president, was notable for his fashion sense. Not only did he have 80 — count ‘em, 80 — pairs of pants, he also had a large mustache and prominent sideburns.

The little-known facts go on and on, unfortunately we won’t have the time to learn about how many presidents came from Ohio, how many have been impeached and what quirks they each had while we’re in class today. And in an Olympic year, we should at least have one full day to root for Team USA — after all, the presidents we should be commemorating today worked to make a country that we could cheer on possible.