Line #6 Main/GeorgeWashingtonSleptHere


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/slept_here.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Sometimes it's a President. Sometimes it's a King.]]
3
4	->''"Abe Lincoln never slept here--but YOU can!"''
5	-->-- '''A billboard advertising a hotel on Kentucky's Interstate 65, the "Abraham Lincoln Memorial Expressway"'''
6
7	On Bob and Alice's roadtrip, they come along an old roadside manor. In front of it, they see a sign saying, "George Washington Slept Here"! How exciting!
8
9	This is when an old inn, manor or other tourist attraction was once used by someone famous and usually dead. Whether or not this is actually ''true'' is generally only addressed if it somehow becomes relevant to the plot, ie if the celebrity in question might have hidden a PlotCoupon or MacGuffin there. Could also be anything from an outhouse to a gas station.
10	----
11	!!Examples:
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13	[[foldercontrol]]
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15	[[folder:Anime And Manga]]
16	* Creator/ChuckNorris slept in ''Manga/TheVoynichHotel'', a fact acknowledged by most people who reside in Blefuscu, the island in which the story takes place. He rented the VIP room at the top of the hotel, and left a small pouch with his teeth, which apparently were taken by [[MaskedLuchador the hotel owner]] himself, in an impromptu match.
17	* A variant occurs in ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' when a mechanic offers to knock down his fee if Roabea and Garrod let him take a picture of himself with their machines. If he can advertise that ''Gundams'' go to him to get serviced, he'll be able to charge his other customers that much more. (It also lets the villainous Frost brothers know that Garrod has been around, though.)
18	* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'', the Joestar group arrives at an inn in Pakistan, and the old woman that runs it says that a ''Film/JamesBond'' movie was filmed here and that Music/JohnLennon also stayed a night. Polnareff eagerly asks if either of those tidbits is true, and the old woman says that it was a joke which makes both of them laugh. [[spoiler:Though since the old woman is Enya the Hag, who hates Polnareff [[YouKilledMyFather for killing her son J. Geil]] [[RevengeMyopia as vengeance for Polnareff's sister Sherry]], she was aiming [[EvilIsPetty to mess with Polnareff as much as possible]]]].
19	[[/folder]]
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21	[[folder:Film]]
22	* ''Film/GeorgeWashingtonSleptHere'' is a 1942 Creator/JackBenny film in which his wife buys a dilapidated old farm house for that specific reason.
23	** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] as the local historical society has determined that it was actually [[spoiler:Benedict Arnold]] who slept there. Then [[DoubleSubversion subverted again]] when they find evidence that Washington really had been there.
24	* In ''Film/{{Heathers}}'', psychotic teenager Jason Dean's father, who runs a demolition company, laments that a historical society is trying to keep him from tearing down a hotel. The reason given is that Glen Miller and his band once spent the night there.
25	* Referenced in the film ''Theatre/ArsenicAndOldLace'' when one of the police officers asks if George Washington slept in the old house owned by the two old women.
26	* In ''Film/HomeAlone2LostInNewYork'', Cedric the bellboy tries to impress Kevin with the history of the hotel by telling him UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover once slept there. In fact, Kevin doesn't know who Herbert Hoover was and assumes from the name that he was the inventor of the vaccum cleaner but he still seems pretty impressed by that.
27	[[/folder]]
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29	[[folder:Literature]]
30	* In ''Literature/AmericaTheBook'', among the list of George Washington's achievements is "All-time record holder for Most Places Slept."
31	* A "sort of history of the United States" by Creator/DaveBarry is titled ''Literature/DaveBarrySleptHere''.
32	* In ''Literature/MrBlandingsBuildsHisDreamHouse'', one of the selling points of the house is that General Gates supposedly stopped to water his horses there during the Revolutionary War.
33	* In ''Literature/TheSherwoodRing'', the family manor "Rest-And-Be-Thankful" literally does have (among other things) a bed that George Washington slept in.
34	* In ''Literature/ThreeMenInABoat'' the trope is discussed by the narrator - in connection with surprisingly high number of pubs allegedly visited by UsefulNotes/ElizabethI and contrasted with surprisingly low number of pubs his fellow traveller Harris had ''not'' visited.
35	-->''She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There's scarcely a pub of any attractions within ten miles of London that she does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf, and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died, if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised: "Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch cold here in the summer of '88;" "Harris was chucked from here in December, 1886."\
36	No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had never entered that would become famous. "Only house in South London that Harris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to see what could have been the matter with it.''
37	[[/folder]]
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39	[[folder:Live Action TV]]
40	* In ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'', after Ben and Leslie have returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii:
41	-->'''Leslie:''' We saw the bus stop where a young UsefulNotes/BarackObama used to sit and wait for the bus... theoretically.\
42	'''Ben:''' That's possible.
43	** While trying to find a reason for establishing a national park in Pawnee, Leslie discovers that President William Harrison once stayed in a cabin nearby. Unfortunately, all that's left is the foundation.
44	* In ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'', Frank says that Elizabeth I once stayed in Dibley when Geraldine asks for stories about famous people in the village. She's excited until Frank adds that Good Queen Bess only stopped because she'd come down with a nasty case of food poisoning.
45	* On ''Series/JustShootMe'', Jack's country house is next to a cabin where Washington planned the Battle of Yorktown. He tore it down years ago to build a tennis court. Which he doesn't use anymore.
46	* A chair bearing a special mark that (allegedly) meant that UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte sat on it was a plot point in an episode of ''Series/{{Lovejoy}} ''; the eponymous antiques dealer was quick to point out that half the antique furniture in France had said mark on it somewhere, including a few items made after the man was dead.
47	* In the first episode of ''Series/{{Newhart}}'', Dick is told that it's said James Madison once stayed at the Stratford Inn. In "No Tigers at the Circus", Dick brings up this fact to people inspecting the inn to see if it qualifies to be a historic landmark, but they inform Dick that Madison couldn't have stayed there because history has shown that he never traveled past north of New York.
48	* In the ''Series/{{Wings}}'' episode "This Old House", the house that Joe and Brian grew up in is condemned for demolition after a storm erodes the cliff it's on, threatening to drop it into the ocean. The cast set out to find a way to save it, and after failing, decide to instead let out some childhood angst and wreck parts of it themselves. Cue Fay coming in at the end to announce that the Nantucket Historical Society had found evidence that Creator/HermanMelville had once [[OhCrap rented a room in that house and would therefore preserve it.]]
49	* Two episodes of ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' are based around attempts to prove this: "Joshua Peabody Died Here ... Possibly", about the (perhaps fictional) founder of Cabet Cove, and "Benedict Arnold Slipped Here".
50	* ''Series/MamasFamily'': In one episode, Mama is in danger of losing her home when the mayor plans to demolish the entire neighborhood to make room for a new city dump. She's able to save the day when she discovers (with some help from Bubba) that her house was once a brothel where the founder of Raytown died, prompting the mayor to declare her house a landmark and call off the demolition.
51	[[/folder]]
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53	[[folder:Music]]
54	* Referenced in Music/HalfManHalfBiscuit's "Fix It So She Dreams Of Me", in which the narrator's dream girl doesn't live in the kind of place that has any kind of historical connections.
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57	[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
58	* Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer once took a jab at the Austrian preoccupation of claiming that random buildings were in some way tied to the life of Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart:
59	-->'''Golden plaque on old building:''' In this house, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) has never lived.
60	[[/folder]]
61
62	[[folder:Theatre]]
63	* ''George Washington Slept Here'' is the title of a 1940 play by Kaufman and Hart about a married couple of New Yorkers who purchase a dilapidated farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where George Washington allegedly spent the night once. HilarityEnsues as they try to fix it up.
64	* ''Theatre/DamnYankees'' mentions this in Lola's song "A Little Brains--A Little Talent," in a joke that had to be {{Bowdlerise}}d out of the film version:
65	-->You've seen the sign that says George Washington once slept here,\
66	Well tho' nobody spied him\
67	Guess who was beside him?
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Video Games]]
71	* In ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', the Old Hroldan Inn is said to be where the famous general (and later DeityOfHumanOrigin) Tiber Septim slept on the night before fighting the battle in which he earned the name Talos Stormcrown. Sleeping in Tiber Septim's bed triggers a SideQuest where you have to retrieve his sword for the ghost of his "sworn brother," who has been waiting for him to return for several hundred years. And because you slept in Tiber Septim's bed (and you're also Dragonborn like him), the ghost [[ThoroughlyMistakenIdentity is convinced that]] ''you'', the PlayerCharacter, are Tiber Septim (even if you are neither male nor even ''human'').
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74	[[folder:Western Animation]]
75	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
76	** Numerous things in Springfield are considered historical landmarks simply because Jebediah Springfield did something there.
77	** Parodied in an episode in which a recording studio engineer tells Homer "This studio has a lot of history. Buddy Holly once stood on this exact spot [[BaitAndSwitchComment and said 'There is no way in Hell I'm performing in this dump!']]"
78	* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''. In an attempt to convince a historical society that the BigFancyHouse he inherited had $100,000,000 worth of history occur in it (so he could sell it to them as repayment of a debt), Peter tried to fake this trope by scratching "Jesus Was Here" on one wall (and it was dated several years before Christ's birth) and installing an Underground Railroad tunnel (consisting of [[LiteralMinded a toy train set hidden under some floorboards]] -- "Go freedom train! Go!"). [[EpicFail This was a disaster.]] Then it turned out that the house had been a presidential brothel frequented by UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, among others.
79	* On ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'', Ernie and Grandma get in a fight when the latter petitions to save a historic building that the former is planning to tear down, prompting Ernie to tell Grandma, "You'd save a pile of dog droppings on the street if George Washington once stepped in it!"
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81	* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes:'' In "His Hare-Raising Tale," a sign is seen outside the Washington home: "Watch your step--George Washington slipped here."
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83
84	[[folder:Real Life]]
85	* Happens fairly often in real life, with old inns advertising that a historical figure once stayed there.
86	* If we expand this to other basic activities by famous figures, you should travel to Israel sometime. They build churches, mosques and shrines on these places, most of which are historically proven to be not where the alleged event happened at all.
87	* The page quote is from a billboard advertising a hotel in Bowling Green, Kentucky, that parodies the state's tendency to do this with its Lincoln connections by proclaiming, "Abe Lincoln never slept here--but YOU can!"
88	* Bran Castle in Romania, at the border of Transylvania and Wallachia, has a reputation of being closely tied to [[{{Dracula}} Vlad Tepes]], though such claims are suspect. While it is currently used as a museum, there was an attempt to sell it to the highest bidder in 2007; the auctioneer marketed it as Dracula's castle.
89	* UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity tour guides call Fraunces Tavern, which is still there, "George Washington's favorite restaurant".
90	* In Ireland, if there's a church or the remains of a church that's more than two hundred years old, it's a safe bet that your tour guide will claim that "The Saint Himself" (Saint Patrick) once said mass there.
91	* After the UsefulNotes/FirstWorldWar, Prussian general Max Hoffman [[TakeThat got in a dig]] at his former boss, Paul Von Hindenburg, through one of these:
92	--> "This is where General Hindenburg slept before the battle, this is where General Hindenburg slept after the battle, and, just between you and me, this is where General Hindenburg slept ''during'' the battle."
93	* In the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, the building where [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler a certain historical figure]] was born is adorned by a memorial stone carrying the following words:
94	--> For peace, freedom and democracy. The millions of dead remind us; may fascism never return.
95	* The Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas has a sign out front that proudly says that both Joan Collins and Michael Jordan got married there (and the way the sign is designed implied [[CrackPairing they married each other]]).
96	* Russia takes this one step further. Not only can you see where Lenin slept, you can see him still sleeping there![[note]]Okay, he obviously didn't sleep in the Lenin tomb while he was alive, but the joke was too good to pass up.[[/note]]
97	* Parodied in the tiny German college town of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tübingen Tübingen.]] [[Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe Goethe]] once stayed there to visit his publisher, and later wrote that he found the town to be horribly dirty, smelly, and generally unpleasant. Just under a second-story window in the middle of the town is a plaque reading "[[VomitIndiscretionShot Goethe puked here]]"
98	* There are ''multiple'' inns and pubs in the southwest of Scotland bearing plaques informing you that the poet Robert Burns once stayed there. The guy travelled a lot.
99	* One could be forgiven for assuming that the main reason [[UsefulNotes/CharlesI Charles I]] lost the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar was his apparent preoccupation with trying to spend the night in every single stately home in the British Isles, considering how many of them seem to make this claim.
100	* A closely related phenomenon is the "By Royal Appointment" emblem that British companies are entitled to use if the Royal Household purchases its products. This is an impressive boast if one sold them wine or bespoke furniture or something: Selling the Royal Household ''dish soap'' is probably no less impressive, albeit certainly a lot funnier in its sheer banality, not that it stopped Procter and Gamble printing the emblem on bottles of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_(brand) Fairy Liquid]] for many years.
101	** The phenomenon also still persists in countries that ''don't'' have a monarchy anymore, with traditional companies like Alois Dallmayr of UsefulNotes/{{Munich}} (former ''Königlicher Hoflieferant'' of delicatessen to the Bavarian royal court) or Zum schwarzen Kameel of UsefulNotes/{{Vienna}} (former ''k.u.k. Hoflieferant'' of coffee and pastries to the Imperial Habsburg courts) still boasting about their historical achievements (and occasionally still supplying the monarchs' decendants).
102	* The famous Château Frontenac hotel in Quebec City has themed 8 executive suites after famous politicians and figures who visited over the years, such as UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt and UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill who came to Quebec City in 1943 and 1944 to discuss the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war]]. Other notable figures include Music/CelineDion, Prime Minister UsefulNotes/PierreTrudeau and his son [[UsefulNotes/CanadianPrimeMinisters Justin Trudeau]] and Creator/AlfredHitchcock, who filmed ''Film/IConfess'' there.
103	* A rather morbid variation can be found in New York City's White Horse tavern - there's a plaque that says, "Creator/DylanThomas died here". (He actually collapsed into a coma on the sidewalk just outside, dying in hospital the next day, but close enough.)
104	[[/folder]]

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