Video: 'Calvin Coolidge: The Silent President'

(Thursday, July 4, 1872, Independence Day) — Calvin Coolidge, the the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929, was born John Calvin Coolidge Jr. today in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, the only U.S. president to be born on Independence Day.

In 1920, Coolidge was elected the 29th vice president of the United States, and he succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923.

Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative and also as a man who said very little and had a dry sense of humor, receiving the nickname “Silent Cal.”

He chose not to run again in 1928, remarking that “if I take another term, I will be in the White House till 1933 … Ten years in Washington is longer than any other man has had it – too long!”