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For some people, sleeping in a presidential bedroom is the thrill of a lifetime. But in the Washington area, the experience can last a lifetime.

Two houses that have been owned by former presidents were offered for sale recently. The sprawling Tudor manor in tony Wesley Heights is where Richard M. Nixon is believed to have written the famous “Checkers” speech that saved his candidacy for vice president. The other residence is the suburban Alexandria split-level where Gerald Ford lived as he prepared to step into the presidency when Nixon resigned in 1974.

They are among at least two dozen area houses that presidents, past presidents and presidents-to-be have called home.

Most presidential dwellings are owned by museums or embassies, but a handful, such as the two for sale now, remain in private hands. People who own them or reside in the same neighborhoods say living in the aftermath of fame isn’t always easy.

Businessman and social worker Cameron Knight owns the 200-year-old house on N Street NW in Georgetown where John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, lived before heading to the White House. Tourists and curiosity-seekers have peered into the windows, stolen items from the yard as souvenirs and climbed over the fence to have a look around. People have shone lights into the bedrooms to take nocturnal pictures.

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For mysteries, it’s the gumshoe; romance novels, the busty maiden; fantasy novels, the young adventurer; political thrillers, the idealistic lawyer.

In science fiction, the archetypal hero is the starship captain – doughty scientist-explorers setting off across the uncharted reaches of the cosmos in search of new life, new civilizations. You know the drill.

This is a list of 20 famous starship captains from fiction. (To me, a starship is an interplanetary vessel – interstellar seemed too limiting. As a result, there are no historical starship captains as of yet. Except maybe L. Ron Hubbard.)

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It’s been 50 years since “In God We Trust” first appeared on U.S. paper currency, and those four little words have proven to be the source of big debate in the courts. 

Long before the words were printed on paper money, they first appeared on coins after a Pennsylvania minister wrote to the secretary of the treasury in 1861, suggesting God’s name should be featured on U.S. coins.

“This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism,” wrote the Rev. M.R. Watkinson to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase in 1861, according to the Web site of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Three years later, U.S. coins began to bear the words “In God We Trust.”

It wasn’t until 1956 that Congress declared those words to be the national motto. On Oct. 1, 1957, they began appearing on the back of dollar bills under the words “The United States of America.”

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