- Shares her name with a character in Tom Clancy's novel. Jack Ryan's wife is named Catherine Ryan. Appropriately, she too becomes First Lady of the United States.
- First lady of the United States (1969-1974).
- Suffered strokes in 1976 and 1982 and recovered fully from both. She also suffered from emphysema (she had been a heavy smoker), a degenerative spinal disease and cancer of the mouth. In December 1992, while hospitalized for respiratory problems, the lung cancer was diagnosed and she made no further public appearances.
- Pat was a nickname given her by her father, referring to her birth date and Irish ancestry, though she also used the name Patricia, which is used on her tombstone though it was not her legal name.
- Her father, William M. Ryan, Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish descent. Her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. She had two older brothers, William M. Jr. (1910-1997) and Thomas (1911-1992), and also had a half-sister, Neva Bender (born 1909), and a half-brother, Matthew Bender (born 1907), from her mother's first marriage.
- Appeared in one Best Picture Academy Award Winner: The Great Ziegfeld (1936). To date, she is the only U.S. First Lady who appeared in a film that won (or even nominated) for Best Picture. Nancy Reagan has appeared in the most films, but never appeared in a film nominated for the category.
- Attended Fullerton Junior College, 1931-1933.
- Was a bit player in Hollywood films and a model before she met Richard Nixon while she was the business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California.
- Second Lady of the United States (1953-1961).
- Pat was the first First Lady to precede her husband in death since Lou Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover, and would remain the most recent until the death of Barbara Bush.
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