This year, for the first time in our history, there are three American presidents who were born in the same year. We have had three pairs of presidents born in the same year — the very unlike John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, in 1767; Richard Nixon and his surprise successor, Gerald Ford, in 1913; Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, 1924.

Now we have three presidents who were born in the calendar year 1946: Bill Clinton in August, George W. Bush in July and Donald Trump in June. Note that all three were born just a little more than nine months after V-J Day. (For younger readers, that’s the end of World War II.)