US Presidents: A Curated Dataset of Presidential Terms, Successional Vacancies and First Ladies (1789-Present)

This curated dataset provides a comprehensive, structured, and high-fidelity historical record of all presidential terms in the United States from the establishment of the executive office in 1789 to the present day. Unlike conventional historical lists or generic web-scraped tables, this resource is the result of a rigorous process of digital curation and technical validation. It captures the complete timeline of the American presidency, documenting key variables such as political affiliation, precise term boundaries, birth jurisdictions, and critical institutional events, including presidential mortality in office and the resulting successional vacancies. Furthermore, it incorporates a dedicated, validated mapping of First Ladies and Vice Presidents, providing a unique multidimensional view of the executive branch's history. The dataset has been engineered to meet the highest standards of data science and open statistics: it features fully standardized temporal variables compliant with the ISO 8601 format (`YYYY-MM-DD`) and handles complex text fields—such as multiple concurrent or sequential vice-presidential records—under strict compliance with the **RFC 4180** standard. This prevents common parsing errors and structural breakage in automated data pipelines.