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.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
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
17:35get notified about our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional videos
17:39or all of them. If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
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!