Top 20 INSANE Facts About US Presidents

John Quincy Adams was a bit of an odd duck. He spent many of his mornings as president skinny dipping in the Potomac River (xref). He was once reportedly cornered by a female journalist who refused to let him dress until he agreed to an interview. John Quincy Adams was also a huge fan of exploration, hoping to fund expeditions around the world, including one to the North Pole. A theory at the time claimed that the poles were home to giant holes leading into the hollow interior of the earth. Some claim that Adams was tempted by this theory, but there's no definitive evidence of that.

Herbert Hoover will always be remembered for his failure to successfully contain or confront the Great Depression. But Hoover was also a great humanitarian, having led the American effort to prevent mass starvation in Europe during World War I. He and his family also had their peculiarities. Years before he became president, Hoover’s son Allan Henry was gifted two pet alligators. He would keep them mainly in the bathtub at the family home, but they were apparently infamous escape artists. First Lady Lou Henry Hoover hated the animals, insisting that they spend the winter of 1921 at the zoo. When the boys brought the animals back in the spring, Lou Henry Hoover had enough. They were ultimately donated to the Smithsonian Zoo.

While in office, Barack Obama evolved from America’s cool young president to America’s goofy dad. But did you know that when he was a kid, Barack Obama was a comic book geek? In his autobiography and in a 2008 interview, Obama confessed to having been a huge fan of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian. As a kid, the future president would often buy comic books from the local newsstand.During his administration, Barack Obama was delighted to learn he was appearing in comic books as a character. Most notably, he appeared on the cover of his beloved “Spider-Man” in July of 2009.

In the modern era, the President of the United States is arguably the most well-protected human being on earth. That wasn’t always the case: Presidential security used to be much more lax. Andrew Jackson, for example, would welcome citizens into the White House once a year to eat cheese and lodge complaints. Presidents were even allowed to leave the White House on their own recognizance. In the case of President Ulysses S. Grant, that wasn’t such a good thing. Grant was the first ever pulled over while in office. He was pulled over for speeding - in a horse-drawn carriage - and was fined with a ticket.

In recent years, documents have been discovered by historians, outlining the torrid love affair between President Warren Harding and his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips. They found a trove of 250 letters between the pair. The affair began when he was a senator, and ended when he began his run for the White House. Phillips successfully blackmailed the future President, keeping it secret. Phillips was, however, only one of many mistresses: as it turned out, Harding was a notorious womanizer. He had a secret lovechild with a secretary named Nan Briton, who Harding originally met in Ohio when she was a teen.

During their lifetimes, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both great friends and bitter rivals. They worked together to usher in the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776. Once America was independent, they fought bitterly on the shape of the nascent United States. Adams believed in a strong industry and federal government. Jefferson believed in the states and the power of an agrarian economy. After Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, the former friends barely spoke for decades. Coincidentally, they both died on July 4th 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of their Declaration. As the apocryphal story goes, each man allegedly died grateful that the other still lived.

In fall of 1950, after almost a century and a half of wear and tear and damage, the White House underwent desperately needed renovations. President Truman relocated across the street to Blair House. On November 1st, two days after a failed coup in Puerto Rico, a pair of Puerto Rican nationalists took advantage of this change. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola stormed Blair House in an attempt to assassinate Truman. Torresola was killed by police in a gunfight while Collazo was taken into custody. Though he was sentenced for execution, President Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. President Carter would later totally commute Collazo’s sentence, freeing him in 1979.

John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States, born in 1790 and elected in 1841. Did you know that, as of 2024, John Tyler still has a living grandson? Tyler had more kids than any other U.S. President, fathering 15 children between 1816 and 1860. His second youngest son, Lyon, was born 9 years after his presidency in 1853. Lyon, in turn, had six children. His son, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, was born in 1928 and, as of early 2024, is still with us at the age of 95.

The only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland started out his prestigious political career as Sheriff of Erie County. During his time in the role, Cleveland also held responsibilities as public executioner… It fell within his duties to either perform executions himself, or else pay a deputy to do so… Cleveland opted for the latter on two occasions, and personally executed two convicted murderers by hanging, Patrick Morrissey and John Gaffney.

When you’re President, you have to remember lots of important things: Never wear an un-pressed shirt, always floss, and never – and we mean never – lose the nuclear detonation codes! Bill Clinton was brilliant at the first two! Buut, not so good at the third. ‘The Football’ is a briefcase kept close to the President, from which a nuclear attack can be launched at any time… ‘The Biscuit’ is a small card bearing top-secret codes for that briefcase… Aaand, on the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton actually lost the biscuit.

U.S. Presidents come in all shapes and sizes, and William Taft was… a little larger than the average! He was so large in fact; he couldn’t fit his 300-plus pounds in the conventional White House bathtub. The White House rumor is that Taft actually got stuck once while bathing. But, at the very least, he did invest in a purpose-built, larger tub — large enough to comfortably fit four men of smaller proportions! Luckily, Taft lost considerable weight post-presidency, got healthier, and probably had room for a rubber duck or two.

When our next President wasn’t abolishing the slave trade, he was attending to the spirits, within the White House itself! Abraham Lincoln’s life was shadowed in sorrow and in seriousness. Following the death of their son Willie in particular, Mary Todd Lincoln longed to communicate with the ‘other side’, and he and his wife regularly entertained well-known spiritualists. On more than one occasion Lincoln was claimed to have some form of prophetic ability, to the point where he foresaw his own assassination in a dream! As spooky as it is, Honest Abe might’ve been psychic?

Calvin Coolidge was one of only two Vermonters to be elected President. He was a famously quiet man, known for his rectitude and moral uprightness. Once, while waiting to move into the White House, he managed to talk down a burglar. He even gave the young man a small $32 loan for train fare back to school. “Silent Cal” also had a pet raccoon and, more importantly, a bizarre obsession with Vaseline. His one odd vice was that he loved to eat breakfast in bed, and while he would eat, he reportedly enjoyed having petroleum jelly massaged into his scalp. To each their own!

You may know that Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, or that he once saw a UFO when he was the Governor of Georgia. But did you know that he was also a Canadian hero? In 1952, Canada and the U.S. secretly scrambled to avoid disaster at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. On December 12, an explosion released nuclear material into the air and flooded the lab's basement with radioactive water. Extremely rare expertise was required to disassemble the damaged core of the nuclear reactor. Thankfully, the U.S. Navy sent members of an elite team who helped design the first nuclear submarines. That team was headed by then 28-year-old Lieutenant James Carter. Carter and his men prevented the disaster from getting any worse.

There are many fascinating– puzzling, even– facts surrounding the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Being the first ever president to be elected despite having no experience in the world of politics, there’s no question that his term was controversial… to say the very least. But in May 2024, Trump was found guilty on 34 charges of illegally falsifying documents in order to keep his public image intact in advance of the 2016 election. This verdict makes Trump the first former US leader to be a convicted felon. If that’s not interesting enough, he’s still the leading Republican candidate for the 2024 election, as the Constitution does not restrict criminals from running for office–  president included.

From the supernatural, to the super embarrassing! In 1992, toward the end of a trading tour in Asia, George H. W. Bush was attending a state dinner, held at the home of the Japanese Prime Minister. All was going well, but then Bush wasn’t feeling well… and then he threw up. And then he fainted. A star spangled stumble and then some, it’s been magnificently memorialized in Japan itself, where there’s now a word for public vomiting that literally translates as ‘to do the Bush thing: Bushu-suru.

A lot of people can likely think of a lot of words to describe George W. Bush, but ‘coordinated’ probably isn’t one of them. And yet, at high school and in university, George W. was decidedly coordinated. Being not too gifted at conventionally masculine pastimes, Bush got his bit of sports field glory by becoming head cheerleader. He has even been pictured in full skirt and wig pom-pom attire, while on stage mocking a rival school. Not exactly on-brand for his political party…

OK, so the image of George Bush cheerleading isn’t entirely enticing, but, in Gerald Ford, we had at least one president who was. Pre-presidency, Ford had an all-American charm about him which landed him both the opportunity to play professional football, and also the odd modeling gig. Boyishly good looking, Ford even found himself on the front cover of Cosmopolitan on one occasion! This guy was destined for the runway; it just wasn’t always gonna be aboard Air Force One.

Theodore Roosevelt lived his life like he was auditioning for ‘most interesting man in the world.’ The teddy bear was named after the former president, a fan of that particular toy. He also wore a lock of Lincoln’s hair at his inauguration. Despite his own history with warfare, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War (multiple xrefs). Perhaps the most interesting event of Roosevelt’s life took place in 1912. Running for another term, the then former President Roosevelt was at a campaign stop in Milwaukee. Before his speech, an attempted assassin shot Roosevelt’s chest. Roosevelt demanded that the crowd leave the assassin unharmed, and proceeded to move forward with his speech before seeking medical attention.

Plenty of presidents are indirectly responsible for ending other people’s lives; international conflict makes that an unfortunate inevitability. And, we’ve seen how Grover Cleveland played lawful executioner. But the seventh President, Andrew Jackson, actually killed someone outright. Before he took the top job, Jackson was notoriously violent, and often inclined to traditionally duel with his enemies. Jackson shot one such enemy, Charles Dickinson, as Jackson attempted to defend his wife’s honor - he was subsequently outcast as a dishonorable man. It’s a miracle he ever made it to the White House at all. Do you know about any strange presidential facts we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments below.