Top 20 INSANE Facts About US Presidents
Bet you didn't know all these crazy stories! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the craziest facts about American Presidents.
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00:00If somebody looked at him the wrong way or somebody impugned his character in any way,
00:05he needed satisfaction. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the 20
00:11craziest facts about American presidents. As of 2024, there have been 46 presidencies,
00:19and many had incredible histories or strange peccadilloes. President Bush was overcome by
00:24nausea and fell forward. It appears he lost consciousness as he toppled over onto his host,
00:30Prime Minister Miyazawa. Number 20. John Quincy Adams was a skinny dipper. John Quincy Adams was
00:39a bit of an odd duck. He spent many of his mornings as president skinny dipping in the Potomac River.
00:45He was once reportedly cornered by a female journalist who refused to let him dress until
00:54he agreed to an interview. John Quincy Adams was also a huge fan of exploration,
01:00hoping to fund expeditions around the world, including one to the North Pole. A theory at
01:05the time claimed that the poles were home to giant holes leading into the hollow interior of the
01:10Earth. Some claim that Adams was tempted by this theory, but there's no definitive evidence of that.
01:25Number 19. Herbert Hoover's Alligators. Herbert Hoover will always be remembered for his failure
01:32to successfully contain or confront the Great Depression. He tried to mitigate the effects of
01:36the depression with large-scale public works projects, such as his namesake dam, and drastically
01:41increasing taxes. Neither worked, the depression continued, and the public blamed Hoover.
01:46But Hoover was also a great humanitarian, having led the American effort to prevent
01:51mass starvation in Europe during World War I. He and his family also had their peculiarities.
01:57Years before he became president, Hoover's son, Allen Henry, was gifted two pet alligators.
02:02He would keep them mainly in the bathtub at the family home.
02:09But they were apparently infamous escape artists. First Lady Lou Henry Hoover hated the animals,
02:15insisting that they spend the winter of 1921 at the zoo. When the boys brought the animals back
02:20in the spring, Lou Henry Hoover had enough. They were ultimately donated to the Smithsonian Zoo.
02:27Number 18. Barack Obama is a comic book geek. While in office, Barack Obama evolved from
02:36America's cool young president to America's goofy dad. But did you know that when he was a kid,
02:48Barack Obama was a comic book geek? In his autobiography, and in a 2008 interview,
02:54Obama confessed to having been a huge fan of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian. As a kid,
02:59the future president would often buy comic books from the local newsstand. During his administration,
03:04Barack Obama was delighted to learn that he was appearing in comic books as a character.
03:09Most notably, he appeared on the cover of his beloved Spider-Man in July of 2009.
03:15Number 17. Ulysses S. Grant got a speeding ticket while president. In the modern era,
03:21the president of the United States is arguably the most well-protected human being on Earth.
03:26That wasn't always the case. Presidential security used to be much more lax. Andrew Jackson,
03:32for example, would welcome citizens into the White House once a year to eat cheese and lodge
03:37complaints. Presidents were even allowed to leave the White House on their own recognizance.
03:48In the case of President Ulysses S. Grant, that wasn't such a good thing. Grant was the first ever
03:54pulled over while in office. He was pulled over for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage and was
04:00fined with a ticket. Number 16. Warren Harding was a prolific womanizer. In recent years,
04:10documents have been discovered by historians outlining the torrid love affair between
04:14President Warren Harding and his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips. They found a trove
04:27of 250 letters between the pair. The affair began when he was senator and ended when he
04:32began his run for the White House. Phillips successfully blackmailed the future president,
04:37keeping it secret. Phillips was, however, only one of many mistresses, as it turned out.
04:42Harding was a notorious womanizer. He had a secret love child with a secretary named
04:47Nan Britton, who Harding originally met in Ohio when she was a teen.
05:03Number 15. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day. During their lifetimes,
05:10John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both great friends and bitter rivals. They worked together
05:15to usher in the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Once America was
05:21independent, they fought bitterly on the shape of the nascent United States. Adams believed in a
05:27strong industry and federal government. Jefferson believed in the states and the power of an
05:32agrarian economy. After Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, the former friends barely spoke for decades.
05:38Coincidentally, they both died on July 4, 1826. As the apocryphal story goes,
05:52each man allegedly died grateful that the other still lived.
05:56Number 14. Harry Truman was almost assassinated.
06:00President Truman, showing no outward signs of disturbance over the incident,
06:04carried out a scheduled public appearance at Arlington Cemetery later that afternoon.
06:08In the fall of 1950, after almost a century and a half of wear and tear and damage,
06:13the White House underwent desperately needed renovations. President Truman relocated across
06:18the street to Blair House. On November 1, two days after a failed coup in Puerto Rico,
06:24a pair of Puerto Rican nationalists took advantage of this change. Oscar Collazo
06:29and Griselio Torresola stormed Blair House in an attempt to assassinate Truman.
06:34Torresola was killed by police in a gunfight while Collazo was taken into custody.
06:39Inside the hospital room, the Puerto Rican killer was grilled by detectives
06:43and secret service men. His accomplice was beyond questioning on a slab in the morgue.
06:51Though he was sentenced for execution, President Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
06:56President Carter would later totally commute Collazo's sentence, freeing him in 1979.
07:02Number 13. John Tyler has a living grandson.
07:06Three generations spanning 222 years and counting. John Tyler was the 10th president
07:13of the United States, born in 1790 and elected in 1841. Did you know that, as of 2024,
07:21John Tyler still has a living grandson? Tyler had more kids than any other U.S. president,
07:27fathering 15 children between 1816 and 1860. His second youngest son,
07:33Lyon, was born nine years after his presidency in 1853. Lyon, in turn, had six children. His son,
07:41Harrison Ruffin Tyler, was born in 1928 and, as of early 2024, is still with us at the age of 95.
07:50But don't expect him to carry on the Tyler tradition of becoming a dad late in life.
07:56I got one wife who's still going strong and that's enough.
07:59Number 12. Grover Cleveland served as an executioner before he became president.
08:04Big deal. When I was a pup, we got spanked by presidents till the cows came home.
08:09Grover Cleveland spanked me on two non-consecutive occasions.
08:13The only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms,
08:17Grover Cleveland started out his prestigious political career as sheriff of Erie County.
08:22During his time in the role, Cleveland also held responsibilities as public executioner.
08:28It fell within his duties to either perform executions himself or else pay a deputy to do so.
08:33The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.
08:37Cleveland opted for the latter on two occasions and personally executed two
08:41convicted murderers by hanging, Patrick Morrissey and John Gaffney.
08:46Number 11. Bill Clinton lost the codes to enable nuclear warhead activation.
08:51We know that the people in the White House are people like us misplacing things, but
08:56the nuclear code? When you're president, you have to remember lots of important things.
09:01Never wear an unpressed shirt, always floss, and never, and we mean never,
09:07lose the nuclear detonation codes. Bill Clinton was brilliant at the first two,
09:12but not so good at the third. The football is a briefcase kept close to the president,
09:18from which a nuclear attack can be launched at any time. The biscuit is a small card
09:24bearing top secret codes for that briefcase. And on the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
09:37Clinton actually lost the biscuit. Number 10. William Taft had a custom-made
09:43bath installed in the White House. US presidents come in all shapes and sizes, and William Taft
09:50a little larger than average. He was so large, in fact, he couldn't fit his 300-plus pounds in the
09:56conventional White House bathtub. The White House rumor is that Taft actually got stuck once while
10:01bathing. But at the very least, he did invest in a purpose-built larger tub, large enough to
10:13comfortably fit four men of smaller proportions. Luckily, Taft lost considerable weight post
10:19presidency, got healthier, and probably had room for a rubber duck or two.
10:24Number 9. Abraham Lincoln attended seances in the White House.
10:28When our next president wasn't abolishing the slave trade, he was attending to the spirits
10:33within the White House itself. Abraham Lincoln's life was shadowed in sorrow and in seriousness.
10:40Following the death of their son, Willie, in particular, Mary Todd Lincoln longed to
10:44communicate with the other side, and he and his wife regularly entertained well-known spiritualists.
10:59On more than one occasion, Lincoln was claimed to have some form of prophetic ability,
11:03to the point where he foresaw his own assassination in a dream.
11:10As spooky as it is, Honest Abe might have been psychic.
11:14Number 8. Calvin Coolidge liked Vaseline.
11:18Calvin Coolidge was one of only two Vermonters to be elected president.
11:23He was a famously quiet man, known for his rectitude and moral uprightness.
11:34Once, while waiting to move into the White House, he managed to talk down a burglar.
11:41He even gave the young man a small $32 loan for train fare back to school.
11:46Silent Cal also had a pet raccoon and, more importantly, a bizarre obsession with Vaseline.
11:52His one odd vice was that he loved to eat breakfast in bed, and while he would eat,
12:05he reportedly enjoyed having petroleum jelly massaged into his scalp.
12:09Teach their own!
12:11Number 7. Jimmy Carter prevented a nuclear meltdown in Canada.
12:16You may know that Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer,
12:19or he once saw a UFO when he was the governor of Georgia.
12:30But did you know that he was also a Canadian hero?
12:34In 1952, Canada and the US secretly scrambled to avoid disaster at Chalk River Laboratories
12:40in Ontario. On December 12th, an explosion released nuclear material into the air and
12:46flooded the lab's basement with radioactive water. Extremely rare expertise was required
12:51to disassemble the damaged core of the nuclear reactor. Thankfully, the US Navy sent members
12:57of an elite team who helped design the first nuclear submarines. That team was headed by then
13:0228-year-old Lieutenant James Carter. Carter and his men prevented the disaster from getting any
13:08worse. He was one of the only men on the entire planet at the time who had the skill set to
13:13develop this kind of a plan and to himself go down inside a melted down nuclear reactor.
13:18Number 6. Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
13:22This is an irreducible verdict. He can appeal, I'm sure he will appeal,
13:28but this is everything the prosecution asked for.
13:31There are many fascinating, puzzling, even facts surrounding the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
13:38Being the first ever president to be elected despite having no experience in the world of
13:42politics, there's no question that his term was controversial, to say the very least.
13:48But in May 2024, Trump was found guilty on 34 charges of illegally falsifying documents
13:55in order to keep his public image intact in advance of the 2016 election.
14:00This is not just hush money. This was about fundamentally changing the 2016 election.
14:07That was the goal here.
14:09This verdict makes Trump the first former US leader to be a convicted felon.
14:14If that's not interesting enough, he's still the leading Republican candidate for the 2024 election,
14:20as the constitution does not restrict criminals from running for office. President included.
14:27Number 5. George H.W. Bush is the unenviable inspiration behind a Japanese word.
14:33I'll ruin you like a Japanese banquet.
14:36From the supernatural to the super embarrassing. In 1992, toward the end of a trading tour in Asia,
14:42George H.W. Bush was attending a state dinner held at the home of the Japanese Prime Minister.
14:48All was going well, but then Bush wasn't feeling well. And then he threw up. And then he fainted.
14:54A star-spangled stumble and then some. It's been magnificently memorialized in Japan itself,
15:00where there's now a word for public vomiting that literally translates as
15:04to do the Bush thing. Bushu suru. Huh, I don't remember reading that.
15:10Number 4. George W. Bush was a cheerleader in high school. A lot of people can likely think
15:16of a lot of words to describe George W. Bush, but coordinated probably isn't one of them.
15:22He cracks me up when he's dancing and he's done it so many times in public.
15:26And yet, at high school and in university, George W. was decidedly coordinated.
15:32Bush got his bit of sports field glory by becoming head cheerleader. He has even been
15:36pictured in full skirt and wig pom-pom attire, while on stage mocking a rival school. Not exactly
15:42on brand for his political party. Number 3. Gerald Ford was once a fashion model.
15:49Okay, so the image of George Bush cheerleading isn't entirely enticing, but in Gerald Ford,
15:54we had at least one president who was. Pre-presidency, Ford had an all-American
16:00charm about him, which landed him both the opportunity to play professional football,
16:05and also the odd modeling gig. Boyishly good looking, Ford even found himself on the front
16:18cover of Cosmopolitan on one occasion. This guy was destined for the runway. It just wasn't always
16:24going to be aboard Air Force One. Number 2. Teddy Roosevelt delivered a campaign speech
16:30with a bullet in his chest. Theodore Roosevelt lived his life like he was auditioning for
16:35Most Interesting Man in the World. The teddy bear was named after the former president,
16:53a fan of that particular toy. He also wore a lock of Lincoln's hair at his inauguration.
16:58Despite his own history with warfare, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end
17:04of the Russo-Japanese War. Perhaps the most interesting event of Roosevelt's life took place
17:09in 1912. Running for another term, the then former president Roosevelt was at a campaign
17:14stop in Milwaukee. Before his speech, an attempted assassin shot Roosevelt's chest.
17:19Roosevelt demanded that the crowd leave the assassin unharmed and proceeded to move forward
17:24with his speech before seeking medical attention. Teddy's energy was legendary and he didn't let up
17:30as commander in chief. Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to
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17:451. Andrew Jackson Killed A Man In A Duel
17:57Plenty of presidents are indirectly responsible for ending other people's lives.
18:02International conflict makes that an unfortunate inevitability. And we've seen how Grover Cleveland
18:07played lawful executioner. But the 7th president, Andrew Jackson, actually killed someone outright.
18:14Before he took the top job, Jackson was notoriously violent and often inclined to
18:18traditionally duel with his enemies. Jackson shot one such enemy, Charles Dickinson,
18:31as Jackson attempted to defend his wife's honor. He was subsequently outcast as a dishonorable man.
18:37It's a miracle he ever made it to the White House at all.
18:41Do you know about any strange presidential facts we didn't mention?
18:44Let us know in the comments below.
19:10And don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this!