The Nutty Lives of these American Leaders Were Anything But Ordinary

29. John Jay in the Doctors’ Riot

Medical research and education in the 1700s relied heavily upon corpse dissection. However, there was a snag: few would donate their loved ones’ remains. So doctors stole them from fresh graves, or paid grave robbers to do so. In the 1780s, doctors from New York’s Columbia University got their fresh corpses from a plot known as the African Burial Ground, where slaves and freedmen were buried. The doctors, would simply head there at night, dig up the freshest graves, and steal the corpses. The relatives’ petitioned the authorities to do something about the grave robbing, but nobody listened. Then one day in April, 1788, some boys peeped through the window of New York Hospital, where a doctor was dissecting a cadaver. To amuse the kids, he waved her severed arm at them. Unfortunately, the woman being dissected happened to be the recently deceased mother of one of the boys.

The kid ran home and told his father, who gathered a mob to attack the hospital. When they broke in, they encountered a nutty scene of horrors. Numerous corpses were strewn all over the place, one of them boiling in a pot to ease dissection. As the doctor on duty hid in a chimney, the mob gathered the cadavers and burned them outside. Over the next few days, thousands of New Yorkers attacked doctors’ homes, and even the city’s jail, where the authorities had moved the doctors for their own protection. As the mob bayed for blood and shouted “Bring out the doctors!“, the militia gathered to resist them. In the fighting that ensued, about twenty were killed. John Jay, who served in the militia, was struck with a rock that cracked his skull. In the aftermath, laws were finally passed to prohibit and punish grave robbing.

28. A Founding Father’s Nutty Demise After He Stuck a Whalebone in His Manhood

Gouverneur Morris (1752 – 1816) wrote the Preamble to the US Constitution, and became known as the “Penman of the Constitution”. He was also a passionate opponent of slavery, and described it in the Constitutional Convention as “the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed“. He particularly loathed the constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause, which boosted the representation of slave states. As he put it: “The inhabitant of Georgia and S.C. who goes to the coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice“. Morris was also a randy goat, who couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Morris had numerous lovers, including mistresses of Prussian and French royalty, Italian noblewomen, and German bankers’ wives. He lost a leg when he fled from a cuckolded husband, either because he jumped straight off the wife’s bed and out a second floor window, or because he was struck by a carriage in his flight. A lost leg did not slow down Morris’ fornication, which prompted John Jay to say: “I almost wish he had lost something else“. Fast forward three decades, and Morris’ affairs had left him with a severe urethral obstruction: his urethra was clogged up. In his desperation for something to clear up the clog, he hit upon a nutty treatment. He broke off a bit of whalebone baleen from his wife’s corset, stuck it up his urethra, and twirled it around. The baleen barbs shredded his manhood from the inside, and he passed from the resultant infection.

27. The Nutty Benjamin

Benjamin Rush (1746 – 1813) was not one of the more famous Founding Fathers. He was not even the most famous Benjamin in that crowd. However, in his day he was famous enough. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rush was a politician, doctor, humanitarian, social reformer, educator, and the founder of Dickinson College. In the Revolutionary War, he served as Surgeon General of the Continental Army. Rush was an antislavery activist, and by the standards of his day, he was as liberal as it gets. However, his quest for racial justice took him down some nutty paths. Among other things, he argued that blacks deserved freedom and equality because they were actually white people – just ones with a weird form of leprosy.

Rush figured that black people were whites afflicted with a form of leprosy that darkened their skins, enlarged their lips, and turned their hair woolly. He even coined a term for the illness: “negritude”. As a means to end discrimination, he advocated a cure that would rid blacks of their supposed illness, and transform them back into whites. Rush’s remedy was to “burn away the black” with acids, to remove the dark skin and woolly hair, and reveal the wholesome and healthy whiteness beneath. Rush wanted to help – and it should not be forgotten that he was an implacable foe of slavery and an early advocate of abolition. However, it is a good thing that his nutty “cure” for blackness was not adopted.

26. The More Famous Benjamin Tore a Path Through French High Society Ladies

Thomas Jefferson usually gets most of the cred as the Founding Fathers’ main Enlightenment figure. However, Benjamin Franklin probably has him trumped. Franklin was an accomplished writer, publisher, printer, postmaster, politician, political theorist, diplomat, statesman, and scientist. He was also an inventor who came up with the lightening rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove. To top it all off, Franklin’s face ended up on a higher denomination bill than that of the Man From Monticello. Less known about Franklin is that he was a babe magnet, who stormed French society and set its ladies’ heart aflutter.

Franklin took full advantage of his appeal to French ladies. While his numerous affairs are tame by today’s standards, he was considered an all out libertine by the staid standards of the Founding Fathers. Franklin was particularly fond of older women. In a letter to a young man, he advised him to opt for an old woman if he was inclined to engage in adultery. Included in his reason were: “when Women cease to be handsome, they study to do be good“. They are more discrete, and: “Lastly They are so grateful!!”

25. The Nutty Thomas Jefferson

When people think of Thomas Jefferson, what usually comes to mind are his major accomplishments: The Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, and establishing the University of Virginia. When it comes to controversy, what usually comes to mind is the jarring contrast between his soaring rhetoric about freedom, the fact that he was a major slaveholder, and that he had an enslaved concubine, Sally Hemings. Less known are his nutty beliefs, and other indicia that make Jefferson come across as a maniac.

Jefferson was a genius, but a nutty genius. For example, he went from a huge dog lover at some point in his life, to a dog hater who had all his dogs – and all the dogs of his slaves – killed. He used to be a close friend of John Adams, before he turned on and became his mortal enemy. He once got into the nineteenth century equivalent of a flame war with some Frenchmen who’d derided the size of American animals. To settle it, she shipped a putrid moose carcass across the Atlantic from America to Paris.

24. Thomas Jefferson and Dogs

Americans tend to like dogs, and tend to like politicians who like dogs. Other than kissing babies, few things offer politicians a shorter cut to voters’ affection than to display affection towards dogs. Thomas Jefferson was a dog lover at some point. However, his view of dogs underwent a complete and outright nutty reversal in his lifetime. In 1789, at the end of his stint as America’s ambassador to France, Jefferson liked dogs just fine. He especially liked shepherd dogs, and went out of his way to get some.

As he put it in a letter to a friend, Jefferson spent the eve of his departure: “[R]oving thro the neighborhood of this place to try to get a pair of shepherd’s dogs. We walked 10 miles, clambering the cliffs in quest of the shepherds, during the most furious tempest of wind and rain I was ever in“. He came across a human corpse in his journey, but no shepherd dogs. He lucked out the next day, however, and managed to buy “a chienne bergere big with pup“. That affection did not last.

23. A Nutty Transformation From Dog Lover to Extreme Dog Hater

In Paris, Thomas Jefferson had been an avid dog lover. However, his views on man’s best underwent a change – and a radical change at that. In short, Jefferson’s erstwhile love of dogs turned to outright hatred. He came to loathe them so much, that he called for the extermination of the entire species. It was quite a switch. Jefferson was quite proud of his dogs when he got back home to Monticello, his plantation near Charlottesville, VA. He boasted of their herding skills, and before long, friends had begun to write Jefferson, and ask for a pup from the next litter.

However, Jefferson was one of those types who demanded strict and complete obedience. When one of his dogs proved obstinate, his views on dogs in general underwent a complete change. His nutty reaction to one dog’s disobedience was to kill all his dogs. He also ordered his foreman to rid the plantation of dogs and kill all the slaves’ dogs as well. Eventually, he advocated for the complete eradication of all dogs everywhere. As he put it in a letter to a fellow dog hater in 1811: “I participate in all your hostility to dogs, and would readily join in any plan for exterminating the whole race“.

22. When Jefferson Stood Up for the Honor of America’s Animals

Thomas Jefferson was often a prickly man. Few things brought out his prickly side when he served as US ambassador to France than slights, real or imagined, directed towards America. Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, a prominent eighteenth century French naturalist and author of Historie Naturelle, a science encyclopedia, rubbed Jefferson the wrong way. The Frenchman came up with the Theory of New World Degeneration, which held that North America was a marshy continent that had recently emerged from the sea.

As the count claimed, North America’s excessive moisture supposedly made the continent’s plants and wildlife inferior to, smaller, and more delicate than those of Europe. Moreover, if plants or animals were transported from Europe to America, Buffon argued, the poor environment would cause them to degenerate into a pitiable and less virile size. Buffon’s was a dumb and nutty take by a man who had never been to the New World. It should have elicited nor more than a scornful chuckle and a shrug. However, as seen below, that’s not how Jefferson handled it.

21. Jefferson Went Out of His Way to Gather Evidence of the Bigness of North American Animals

Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon diss of North America’s mega fauna seriously ticked off Thomas Jefferson. So he decided to disprove the count’s theory. He went to great lengths – as in totally nutty lengths – to win the argument. Jefferson was extremely upset by Buffon’s Theory of New World Degeneration. Rather than dismiss it as silly gibberish, Jefferson saw Buffon’s take as an insult to America and its potential greatness. So he set out to challenge the Frenchman with evidence of American bigness. For starters, he wrote friends back home, and asked them to measure the size of American animals.

Among the responses was one from James Madison, who sent precise measurements of a Virginian weasel, including the “distance between the anus and vulva“. Like a Founding Father version of George Costanza from Seinfeld, Jefferson grew increasingly obsessed with the need to prove Buffon wrong. So he painstakingly compiled the measurements in a table. It included comparisons such as those between 12-pound American otters versus 8.9-European counterparts, and 410-pound American bears vs 153.7-pound European ones. Eager to confront the Frenchman, Jefferson accepted a dinner invitation at Buffon’s home, and headed there armed with his data for a showdown.

20. Thomas Jefferson’s Nutty Quest for a Giant Moose

Thomas Jefferson showed up at Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon’s home, ready for a confrontation. The Frenchman diplomatically put off his nutty guest, and delayed the debate for another time. However, halfway through the dinner, somebody mentioned the North American moose. Buffon declared that an animal of such size could not possibly exist in the continent’s poor environment. A furious Jefferson sent a flurry of letters to America, and begged that somebody, anybody, kill the biggest moose they could find, and ship it to him in Paris.

Finally, New Hampshire’s governor sent out hunters in the dead of winter to shoot the biggest moose they could bag. They did, then dragged it back to civilization for two weeks through heavy snow. A taxidermist stuffed it, before it was shipped to France. However, the taxidermist was inept, and the moose arrived in Paris in 1787 as a putrid mess. A triumphant Jefferson immediately sent the fetid carcass to Buffon, with a letter that told him to picture it with more fur and antlers. Unfortunately, Jefferson never got a retraction from Buffon: the Count died before he could publicly disavow his claims.

19. The Johnson Who Liked to Boast About His Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson would not have fared well in the #MeToo era. For one thing, he wanted everyone to know that he had a really big… male part. For another, he was competitive womanizer. Whenever he heard somebody mention JFK’s numerous affairs, LBJ would bang the table, and boast that he had more women by accident than JFK had ever had on purpose. Today, the sheer number of explicit allegations LBJ’s conduct invited would probably force a presidential resignation – at least if it was a TV president, or a Democrat.

Johnson, who nicknamed his manhood “Jumbo”, had zero humility when it came to his Johnson. Indeed, long before he became president, LBJ had made himself infamous for the nutty ways in which he creeped people out with his privates, especially in Capitol Hill restrooms. If a colleague entered as Johnson was finishing off at the urinal, LBJ would often swing around, still holding his member, and whirl it around while hooting: “Woo-eee! Have you ever seen something as big as this?!” Johnson would then begin discussing pending legislation, while continuing to brandish and shake his beloved “Jumbo”.

18. LBJ and His Beloved Jumbo

Lyndon Johnson seriously skeeved many around him with his nutty fixation on his manhood. In what amounted to an alpha male ritual of primacy assertion, LBJ had his aides, both male and female, take dictation as they stood in the doorway of his office bathroom, while he did his business on the toilet. Even on the floors of the House or Senate, Johnson would extravagantly grab his crotch, and frequently reach through his pocket to better position “Jumbo”, so its outline could show beneath his pants.

LBJ constantly tried to work his “size” into conversations. E.g.; in a recorded phone call with his tailor, Johnson said: “Another thing, the crotch, down where your nu*s hang – it’s always a little too tight. So when you make them up, gimme an inch that I can let out there“. He also had a special nozzle installed in his White House bathroom, to shoot water at his privates while he showered. When White House staff objected that it would require a great deal of plumbing work, Johnson steamrolled over their complaints, and told them: “If I can move 10,000 troops in a day, you can certainly fix the bathroom any way I want it“.

17. LBJ’s Funny Side

America’s 36^th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908 – 1973), might have gone down in history as one of the country’s greatest chief executives if it had not been for the Vietnam War. LBJ had spent decades in Congress, both in the House and Senate, whose Majority Leader he became in the 1950s. When fate elevated him from vice president to president after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson entered the Oval Office with an unequaled mastery of the legislative process.

He put that expertise to good use, and pushed through landmark legislative accomplishments such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both Medicare and Medicaid also began during his administration. Had Vietnam not derailed his ambitious “Great Society” program, LBJ would probably rank alongside Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of America’s most transformative presidents. The disastrous war in Southeast Asia and the great legislative accomplishments loom large in the public’s perceptions of LBJ. They obscure, as seen below, the lesser known nutty – and sometimes seedy – side of the man.

16. LBJ’s Good Ole Boy Persona

Lyndon Johnson liked to depict himself as a simple a Good Ole Boy. In many ways, he really was. A Good Ole Boy, that is: there was nothing simple about the smart-as-a-whip LBJ. One way the Good Ole Boy side came out was in his humor. Not subtle salon or New Yorker type quips and bon mots, but down to earth – and quite often earthy – jokes and pranks, the darker the better. One of his favorite nutty jests was to convince guests – whose numbers included important foreign dignitaries – that they were about to die.

LBJ pulled that off with his Amphicar – a West German vehicle that was the only civilian passenger amphibious automobile to ever be mass produced. About 4000 were made, and Johnson was the proud owner of a baby blue one. When LBJ visited his Texas ranch, he often invited people down to spend some time with him as his guests. While there, the host would often take them for a drive in his Amphicar – without telling them what it was. As seen below, he would then convince them that they were about to drown.

15. There’s Pranking, and There’s LBJ’s Nutty Put-People-in-Fear-of-Death Pranking

As LBJ drove guests around the Texas backcountry in his Amphicar, he would come close to a lake or pond, and suddenly pretend to lose control of the vehicle. Then, to the terrified guests’ consternation, he would drive straight into a body of water. As the car splashed into a lake and the terrified passengers screamed, and perhaps soiled their pants as their lives flashed before their eyes, Johnson would double over with laughter. As one of the practical joke’s marks described the experience: “The President, with [his secretary] Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back, was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down.

We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!” The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in a Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. “Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car.” Then he would roar [with laughter]“. That was LBJ’s nutty humor in a nutshell.

14. The Other POTUS Who Nicknamed His Dong

LBJ was not the only POTUS to give his dong a nickname. In 1899, Warren G. Harding began to work his way up the political ladder. From Ohio state senator, he became a failed Republican nominee for governor, then won a 1914 election to the US Senate. Throughout most of his political career, he carried on an extramarital affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips. As historians would discover from love letters he wrote her, Harding referred to his genitals as “private chief of staff”, but more often referred to it as “Jerry”.

In one such letter, Harding wrote to Phillips: “Jerry — you recall Jerry…— came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it… He told me to say that you are the best and darlingest in the world, and if he could have but one wish, it would be to be held in your darling embrace and be thrilled by your pink lips that convey the surpassing rapture of human touch“. The affair lasted for fifteen years, before Harding finally ended it in 1920, as he ran for president.

13. Warren G. In the Closet

Warren G. Harding’s affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips was relatively ho-hum. The same could not be said about his affair with Nan Britton. She wrote a tell-all book after Harding’s death – The President’s Daughter – in which she alleged that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter upon her. Britton described salacious details that make Trump and Stormy Daniels or Clinton and Monica Lewinsky look tame. Among other things, Warren G. and Nan got it on in White House closets. In a nutty twist, Secret Service agents were posted as lookouts to turn away intruders.

Nan alleged that after she gave birth, the president paid her child support of $500 a month – a considerable sum back then. Understandably, Harding’s family rushed to defend what was left of his reputation, and denied the affair. They painted Nan Britton as a liar, and alleged that the 29^th president had been infertile, and so could not have possibly fathered a child upon her. Things remained in a he-said-they-said standoff until 2015, when DNA tests concluded that Nan’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Bleasing, was indeed Harding’s child.

12. Honest Abe, a Borderline Marxist?

The GOP has traditionally been pro-business, and Republicans have usually been reliable allies of employers in disputes with labor unions and employees. A little known fact that might seem nutty but is all too true is that the first Republican president had some outright Marxist views about labor. In his first speech as an Illinois state legislator in 1837, Abraham Lincoln stated: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people“. In his first Annual Message to Congress, on December 3^rd, 1861, he wrote: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed“.

Lincoln continued: “Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them“.

11. It Sounds Nutty But it’s True: Abraham Lincoln Corresponded With Karl Marx

In a nutty historic twist, Abraham Lincoln’s Marxist views probably came directly from Karl Marx himself. The author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital had been a prolific contributor to the New York Daily Tribune. It was the most influential Republican newspaper of the 1850s, when the GOP was founded. In 1848, the Tribune’s publisher had invited Marx to become a correspondent. Over the decade that followed, Marx, sometimes with the help of his colleague Friedrich Engels, wrote over 500 articles for the Republican newspaper.

Marx detested labor exploitation, and became a huge Lincoln fan. He cheered Honest Abe on as he wrecked slavery, the era’s most exploitative labor system. In 1864, Marx wrote a letter on behalf of the International Working Men’s Association, to congratulate Lincoln on his reelection and wish him success in the US Civil War. The president instructed the American ambassador in Britain, where Marx lived, to thank him and let him know that the United States: “derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies“.

10. The Bland George H.W. Bush Was a Hound Dog

President George Herbert Walker Bush came across as pretty bland. However, there was some spice and salacious fodder in his private life: the long-term mistresses he kept for decades. Before he became Ronald Reagan’s vice president and succeeded him in the Oval Office, Bush I’s public service life included stints as a Congressman, an ambassador, and as CIA Director. Bush’s campaign platform included a family values plank, and he was endorsed by The Moral Majority, had mistresses. In a nutty twist, throughout his decades-long political career, he kept mistresses.

Bush was not a compulsive womanizer – nowhere close to the levels of a JFK or LBJ. Instead, he maintained a few discrete relationships. His wife Barbara generally tolerated them, because he was discrete, never humiliated her, and usually carried on his affairs out of town so as not to jeopardize his marriage. But he did carry on affairs – and they tended to be long term ones. An example was one he carried out with an Italian woman, whom he kept in a New York City apartment in the 1960s.

9. Bush’s Wife – Not Barbara, the Other Wife

George H. W. Bush usually kept his mistresses far away. That changed when he encountered Jennifer Fitzgerald, a 42-year-old short, blond, and pretty divorcee. She worked as an assistant to one of Gerald Ford’s aides, and Bush was smitten when he met her. In 1974, Bush was appointed ambassador to China, and he had Fitzgerald join him there as his secretary. He told friends that he chose her to act as a buffer between him and Henry Kissinger’s State Department, but few bought it. As one embassy staffer put it: “I don’t know what skills she brought to the job. She certainly couldn’t type“.

Fitzgerald arrived in Beijing on December 5^th, 1974, and the next day, Bush took her for a twelve-day “diplomatic conference” in Hawaii. Unlike his previous affairs, which Barbara Bush had turned a blind eye to, the situation with Fitzgerald was more than a dalliance. As described by a close family friend: “It wasn’t just another woman. It was a woman who came to exert enormous influence over George for many, many years. … She became in essence his other wife … his office wife“. Barbara burned her love letters with Bush, which she had treasured since World War II, and went into a severe depression.

8. Luckily For Bush, the Press Didn’t Give His Affair the Clinton Treatment

George H. W. Bush stint in Beijing was brief, and after a year, President Gerald Ford asked him to become his CIA Director. Bush accepted, but only if he could bring Jennifer Fitzgerald with him as his confidential assistant. A memo in Ford’s Presidential Library, dated November 23^rd, 1975, states: “Please advise me as soon as you have completed office space arrangements for George Bush and Miss Fitzgerald“. Bush travelled around the world as head of the CIA, and took Fitzgerald with him. In the meantime, Barbara Bush spiraled into a deep depression that brought her to the brink of suicide on multiple occasions. The extramarital relationship continued, even as Bush indulged in other dalliances such as an intense but brief affair with a young photographer amidst the 1980 presidential campaign.

When the Reagan-Bush ticket won in 1980, Fitzgerald was brought along as a member of the vice-presidential staff. Tongues wagged, but Bush was deaf to them, and he kept his mistress by his side throughout his eight years as vice president. When he ran for president in 1988, Bush appointed Fitzgerald as his liaison to Congress. When he won the election, he made her his chief of protocol. In what seems like nutty brazenness, it was an open secret that Bush I had a mistress in his years as vice president and president. What seems even nuttier, especially in light of how the media is nowadays, no scandal ensued. The affair finally ended after The New York Post exposed it amidst Bush’s failed 1992 reelection campaign.

7. The President Who Believed That the Center of the Earth Was Inhabited by People

Like his father, America’s second president John Adams, John Quincy Adams was a brilliant man. Before he became president, JQ Adams had been a great diplomat – perhaps America’s best diplomat ever. His accomplishments included a stint as ambassador to Russia, and service in the delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. JQ Adams also served as Secretary of State, in which capacity he negotiated the acquisition of Florida, and played a key role in the creation of the Monroe Doctrine. He also served in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, and became one of the early major opponents of slavery.

However, while clearly an intelligent man, Adams had some blind spots. One such was his belief in the Hollow Earth Theory – a nutty theory considered ludicrous even in his own time. As the name indicates, Hollow Earth posited that our planet was not a solid rock. Instead, it was supposedly more like a ball, with concentric layers separated by empty spaces, that were probably inhabited by people. As seen below, Adams not only believed in that balderdash, but actually wanted to prove it at the taxpayers’ expense.

6. The Nutty Hollow Earth Theory

The Hollow Earth craze was kicked off by a charlatan named John Cleves Symmes, Jr. A veteran of the War of 1812, Symmes moved to the frontier, where he reinvented himself as a scientist and became known as the “Newton of the West”. In 1818 the Newton of the West published Symmes Circular No. 1: “I declare the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking“.

Each concentric circle supposedly contained a subterranean world, all of them heated and illuminated by a sun-like object at the center of the earth. Symmes then hit the lecture circuit, and lobbied the government for an expedition to the poles, where he claimed the openings to the hollow earth’s interior were located. Educated people laughed off the idea, but his nutty theory was taken seriously enough by many. Those who bought into it included John Quincy Adams, who lent his support to the proposed Symmes expedition. Indeed, he promised to do just that in his successful 1824 presidential campaign.

5. A Nutty Expedition to the Center of the Earth

John Quincy Adams, just like other believers in the Hollow Earth theory, assumed that the hollow planet’s internal concentric spheres must be inhabited by humans or humanoid beings: de facto mole men. JQ Adams was interested in the natural resources beneath the earth, and like Symmes, he wanted to establish trade with the hollow earth’s inhabitants. Backed by such heavyweights, Symmes’ expedition actually made it to the agenda of the US House of Representatives and came up for a vote. The proposal was defeated, 56 to 46.

Put another way, it meant that roughly 44% of the country’s Congressmen were willing to spend taxpayer money on a nutty quest to try and contact mole people. The president did not give up, however, and sought to get Congress to reconsider, and did what he could to gather support and resources for the expedition. However, JQ Adams served only one term, before he lost the 1828 election to Andrew Jackson. The newly elected POTUS promptly canceled the expedition and abandoned his predecessor’s attempts to reach the center of the hollow earth. Which was unsurprising: Andrew Jackson dismissed the notion that the earth was a hollow ball as nutty. Instead, Jackson believed the earth was flat.

4. The Frail Child Who Grew Up to Become a Tough POTUS

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt (1858 – 1919), America’s 26^th president, was a sickly child whose frequent bouts of ill health made his parents fear that he would never make it to adulthood. The son of a Manhattan socialite and a businessman philanthropist father, young Teddy often suffered severe nighttime asthma attacks that the best doctors could do little about. As he described the bouts in later years, they felt as if somebody had sat on his chest and tried to smother him with pillows.

However, TR was a born fighter who did not despair. Instead, he discovered a way to help him keep down the asthma and simultaneously keep up his spirits: vigorous exercise. When he was eleven-years-old, Teddy traveled with his family to Europe. As they hiked in the Alps, the frail child discovered that he could keep pace with his father. It felt pretty good, and from then on, TR adopted a regimen of strenuous exercise and outdoors activities. He also took up boxing in order to learn how to fight, after he got bullied by two older boys on a camping trip.

3. A Terrible Year That Made TR Quit Politics

As a young man, Theodore Roosevelt went to Harvard, where he boxed and rowed. He was good enough at the former to make it to second place in a Harvard boxing tournament. After Harvard, he spent a year at Columbia Law School, before he dropped out in 1881 to serve in the New York State Assembly. His political career showed early promise, and he made a name for himself, especially in his efforts against corporate corruption. Then came 1884, a truly terrible year for the future president.

Valentine’s Day, February 14^th, 1884, was extremely tragic for TR. That day, two days after she gave birth to their daughter Alice, his wife died. His mother died a few hours later. The only entry on his diary that day was an ‘X’, and the notation “The light has gone out of my life“. That summer, he attended the GOP National Convention in Chicago, but his candidate lost. The personal and political setbacks in quick succession caused TR to feel burned out, so he decided to quit politics and move out West. He had visited the Dakota Territory in 1883 to hunt buffalo, and fell in love with the western lifestyle. So he invested $14,000 – a significant amount in those days – to become a rancher.

2. Teddy Roosevelt, Rancher

Theodore Roosevelt was not just a rich East Coast dude who went out west to play cowboy. In the summer of 1884, he established the Elkhorn Ranch on the banks of the Little Missouri River in the Badlands, about 35 miles north of what is now Medora, North Dakota. He enthusiastically embraced his new occupation as a rancher, and set out to learn the ropes – literally – of the profession. He learned to ride, rope cattle, and hunt, and wrote three books about his experience. Later that year, he went on a days-long horseback ride to clear his head and take in the scenery, and eventually came across the Nolan Hotel in Mingusville, Montana.

The place looked like a seedy dive, and TR was reluctant to enter – especially after he heard a pair of gunshots coming from the bar. However, nightfall was near, and it and it was cold outside, so he went in. He saw a “shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face“. As soon as he saw TR, who wore glasses, the bar bully hailed him as “Four Eyes”, and announced to all that “Four Eyes is going to treat!” The future president tried to play it off as a joke, but the lout followed him around. As seen below, it did not end well – for the lout.

1. Teddy Roosevelt, the Bar Brawler

Theodore Roosevelt described his encounter with an armed bully in a Montana bar: “As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ‘Four Eyes,’ in reference to my spectacles, and said, ‘Four Eyes is going to treat.’ I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language… In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, ‘Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,’ and rose, looking past him.

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head… if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed“. The next day, the humiliated loudmouth left town on a freight train.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Anthony, Dave, and Reynolds, Gareth – The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories From American History (2017)

Auto Blog – LBJ’s Amphibious Car Caught Friends and Dignitaries by Surprise

Brodie, Fawn McKay – Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974)

Business Insider, July 8^th, 2014 – Ancient US Presidential Scandal Revealed

Cheat Sheet – Shocking Scandals of Former US Presidents

Cracked – 5 Nutty Moments From the Lives (and Deaths) of America’s First Leaders

Dallek, Robert – Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004)

Dickinson College – Benjamin Rush, Race, Slavery, and Abolitionism

Dugatkin, Lee Alan – Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America (2009)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Gouverneur Morris

Encyclopedia Britannica – John Jay, United States Statesman and Chief Justice

Gawker – LBJ Was Obsessed With His Dick

Gizmodo – Which President Greenlit a Trip to the Center of the Earth?

Grunge – US Presidents Who Were Really Weird People

Guardian, The, January 22^nd, 2018 – Why Lyndon Johnson, a Truly Awful Man, is My Political Hero

Heavy – Jennifer Fitzgerald: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

History Collection – 10 Conspiracies Which are Far From Conspiracy Theories

IFL Science – John Quincy Adams Approved a Mission to Earth’s Interior to Meet the Mole People That Live Within

Kaplan, Fred – John Quincy Adams: American Visionary (2014)

Listverse – 10 Stories That Show the Weird Side of Thomas Jefferson

Los Angeles Times, August 13^th, 2005 – When Justices Won’t Go

National Park Service – Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Vehicles

National Public Radio – Thomas Jefferson Needs a Dead Moose Right Now to Defend America

New York Post, March 30^th, 2019 – Barbara Bush Contemplated Suicide Over Husband’s Alleged Affair With Aide

New York Times, August 12^th, 2015 – DNA is Said to Solve Mystery of Warren Harding’s Love Life

Radford, Marsha – Everything You Always Wanted to Know About America’s Presidents But Were Afraid to Ask (2007)

Rumpus, The, February 21^st, 2011 – On This Presidents’ Day: A Brief History of Presidential S*x

Sandburg, Carl – Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1929)

Sandburg, Carl – Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)

Smithsonian Magazine, June 17^th, 2014 – The Gory New York City Riot That Shaped American Medicine

Swarthmore College, History 41 – Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress

Time Magazine, July 7^th, 2003 – Why He Was a Babe Magnet

Times, The, September 19^th, 2004 – Mistress of Influence: Bush’s ‘Other Wife’

US House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee, Serial No. 112-84 – Executive Overreach: The President’s Unprecedented “Recess” Appointments