President Ronald Reagan helped redefine the purpose of government and pressured the Soviet Union to end the Cold War. He solidified the conservative agenda for decades after his presidency.

• Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and became the highly influential voice of modern conservatism. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975.
• Born: February 6, 1911, Tampico, IL
• Died: June 5, 2004, Bel Air, Los Angeles, CA
• Presidential term: January 20, 1981 – January 20, 1989
• Party: Republican Party
• Vice president: George H. W. Bush (1981–1989)
• First president born in Illinois.
• First president to be re-elected over the age of seventy, as he was 73 years old when he was re-elected in 1984.
• First president to celebrate his 75th birthday while in office. Reagan was born in 1911 and turned 75 in 1986. His second term in office expired on 20 January 1989.
• First president to have been divorced. He married his first wife Jane Wyman in 1940, and the couple divorced in 1949.
• First president to have been a professional actor.
• First president to be the head of a union (the Screen Actors Guild).
• First president to be inaugurated at the West Front of the United States Capitol Building.
• First president to visit Jamaica, Barbados, and Grenada while in office.
• First president to be older than four of his predecessors (Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, and Carter).
• First president to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O’Connor).
• First president to visit the New York Stock Exchange, (on March 28, 1985) while in office.
• First president to invoke Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• First president to attend and open an Olympic Games (the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles) while in office.
• First president to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom whilst still alive and the first to be Awarded with Distinction.
• First president to have served in the United States Army Air Forces.
• First president to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• First president to receive a Golden Globe Award. He received the Hollywood Citizenship Award at the 14th Golden Globe Awards.
• First president to serve two full terms with a House of Representatives controlled by the opposing party.
• First president to nominate a Hispanic-American (Lauro Cavazos) to a Cabinet post. Cavazos was appointed United States secretary of education in 1988.
• First president to live to the age of 91, he lived to be 93.