What identifier does not apply to William Howard Taft?

a) became chief justice of the Supreme Court

b) was vice president before becoming president

c) finished third when he ran for re-election

d) was the heaviest president ever

Answer: b) Taft, the Ohio Republican who was elected president in 1908 — 100 years ago — served as secretary of War (the precursor Cabinet position to today’s secretary of Defense) under President Theodore Roosevelt. But Taft never served as vice president.

Roosevelt considered Taft a close ally and promoted his successful bid for president in 1908. But the a rift developed between them, based on the perception held by Roosevelt, the preeminent figure of the “progressive Republican” movement, that Taft had followed too conservative a path as president.

Roosevelt tried to wrest the 1912 Republican nomination from Taft and when he was thwarted established the Progressive, or Bull Moose, Party ticket, which produced the strongest third-party showing in presidential election history: Roosevelt took 27 percent of the popular vote and 88 electoral votes while Taft had 23 percent and eight electoral votes. But the Republican split allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win with 42 percent of the popular vote and a 435-vote electoral landslide.

Taft, a former federal circuit court judge who said his dream was to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, got his wish when he was appointed to the position in 1921 by President Warren G. Harding, a fellow Ohio Republican. He headed the court until ill-health prompted him to step down in February 1930. He died a month later at age 72.

Taft was the first president buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Only one other president, John F. Kennedy, was interred there since.

Taft was the weightiest president, tipping the scales and more than 300 pounds, though biographers note he lost a considerable amount of weight after he left the White House.

Taft is credited as being the first president, in 1910, to throw out the “first pitch” of the season at a major league baseball game. A disputed piece of baseball legend also has it that Taft stood up to stretch between the top and bottom of the seventh inning at the game, and the rest of the crowd rose out of respect — beginning the tradition of the “seventh-inning stretch.”

The Taft political legacy in Ohio continued through his son, Robert A. Taft, who served in the Senate from 1939 to his death in 1953 as a leader of the party’s conservative wing . He unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1940, 1948 and 1952. The former president’s grandson, Robert A. Taft Jr., was elected to one Senate term in 1970 and his great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, was Ohio’s governor from 1999 to 2007.