Ulysses S. Grant was the eighteenth president of the United States.  President Grant was given the name Hiram Ulysses Grant when he was born, but later changed it to Ulysses Hiram Grant.  Then when he applied to West Point, Representative Hamer accidentally wrote Ulysses Simpson Grant and President Grant didn't correct it.

Important events during President Grant's administration were:

• The air brake was patented by George Westinghouse on April 13, 1869.

• There were ceremonies at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869 to celebrate the Pacific railroads meeting and the start of the railroad service across the United States.  There were four spikes connecting the railroad tracks:  two gold and two silver and they came from Montana, Idaho, California, and Nevada.

• The population of the United States grew to 40 million in 1870.

• The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on March 30, 1870.

• The Great Chicago Fire took place on December 14, 1871.  It killed about 300 people and left 90,000 people without homes.

• Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call on March 10, 1876.

• General Custer attacked Sitting Bull and the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn River in Montana on June 25, 1876.

• Colorado was admitted as the 38th state on August 1, 1876.

Ulysses Grant was

• the first President to be born in Ohio.

• the seventh President to live in a state he wasn't born in.

• the first President whose parents were both alive when he was inaugurated.