Which president misspelled tomato?

Answer 1

Dan Quayle was said to have spelled potato as potatoe

The potato incident actually did take place June 15, 1992 in a school in Trenton and was recorded for posterity and then-Vice President Dan Quale's eternal embarrassment. In his 1994 memoir, Standing Firm, Quayle devotes a whole chapter to the events in a classroom at Trenton's Munoz Rivera School - and the impact of them on his career.

In the book, Quayle said he knew little about his visit to Trenton, other than it was to help spotlight the city's Weed and Seed program, which provided anti-drug education to grade school-children.

When he got the Munoz Rivera School, Quayle spoke with some women involved in the program, before being hustled off by his aides to another classroom for a staged spelling bee.

According to his autobiography, Quale asked Keith Nahigian, an aide, what he was supposed to do and was told that he should merely read words off some flash cards for the children to spell on the blackboard. Nahigan confirmed that the words had been checked, informing Quale: "We looked at them and they're just very simple words. No big deal.''

Enter William Figueroa, 12, a sixth-grader from the Mott School in the South Ward who had been bussed to Munoz Rivera to take part in the vice presidential event. With cameras rolling, William was given the word potato to spell and he proceeded to write the word correctly on the blackboard. In the footage Quale can be seen looking at the blackboard, then at his contest card, and gently and quietly, but quite audibly, telling William, "You're close, but you left a little something off. The e on the end. "

Quale wrote in his autobiography: "So William, against his better judgment and trying to be polite, added an e'' and won applause for it from those assembled in the classroom, including Mayor Doug Palmer."

The misspelling wasn't mentioned until the end of the press conference after the event, when one reporter asked Quayle, "How do you spell potato?''"I gave him a puzzled look, and then the press started laughing. It wasn't until that moment that I realized anything was wrong,'' Quayle wrote.