10 Weirdest Presidential Facts Of All Time

Presidents' Day falls on Feb. 21 this year, and this offers an opportunity to consider the achievements of the nation's finest leaders. However, each president had his own challenges, quirks and anomalies, and in celebration of the off-kilter we are happy to share our picks for the 10 weirdest presidential facts of all time.

The Presidents Before Washington: George Washington was inaugurated as the first U.S. president in 1789. However, the nation declared its independence in 1776 – so, who was running the country during those intervening 13 years?

John Hancock was serving as President of the Continental Congress for the United Colonies of America when the Declaration of Independence was signed, at which point he became President of the Continental Congress for the United States of America. Henry Laurens, John Jay and Samuel Hamilton succeeded him in that position. With the passage of the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781, Hamilton became President of the United States in Congress Assembled, and over the next several years the position was held by Thomas McKean, John Hanson, Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair and Cyrus Griffin all served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled.

With the 1789 ratification of the Constitution, the federal government was established and Washington was elected as its president.

The Gospel According To Jefferson: While everyone knows Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, many people are unaware that he rewrote the New Testament.

Jefferson combined passages of the four Gospels by cutting pages out of his personal Bibles with a razor and gluing pages together. In this process, he edited out all of Jesus’ miracles, passages that advocated for his divinity and the Resurrection. He compiled the work under the title “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” but would not allow its publication during his lifetime.

Now commonly called the Jefferson Bible, this distinctive consideration of the sacred text was not known to the general public until the Smithsonian Institution acquired the copy from Jefferson’s great-great-granddaughter in 1895. It was finally published until 1904.

John Tyler’s Postal Policies: In 1841, President William Henry Harrison died one month after his inauguration, making him the first president to die in office. This created a constitutional dilemma on Vice President John Tyler’s ability to succeed Harrison.

To Tyler, there was no question that the Constitution spelled out the chain of succession, and he took the presidential oath. To Tyler’s detractors, however, the Constitution was not clear on whether a vice president automatically assumed the full presidential authority.

Throughout his administration, Tyler’s foes refused to acknowledge him as the legitimate president and would send correspondence to the White House addressed to “Acting President John Tyler” or “Vice President John Tyler.” Tyler instructed his staff that any correspondence that was not addressed to “President John Tyler” was to be returned to the senders.

Zachary Taylor’s Fatal Lunch: On July 4, 1850, President Zachary Taylor attended an afternoon celebration at the site of the planned Washington Monument. During the festivities, he was reported to have consumed a large quantity of cherries and ice milk, and upon returning to the White House he consumed several glasses of water. Five days later, he was dead.

Taylor’s personal physician attributed his death to cholera morbus, a bacterial infection in the small intestine. Cholera was a recurring disease in summertime Washington in the 1850s, and it is possible that the bacteria got into either his iced milk or his White House water glasses.

In 1991, Dr. Clara Rising, a historical novelist and former humanities professor at the University of Florida, speculated that Taylor’s death matched the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. She received permission from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to exhume his body and test it for arsenic, which can last in a body for centuries. The result: Taylor showed a miniscule trace of arsenic in his system, but the level was far removed from the amounts needed to induce poisoning.

Andrew Johnson’s Self-Tailored Style: Andrew Johnson was the only president who never attended school – his family lacked the funds for an education, so Johnson and his brother were apprenticed at a young age to a tailor.

The apprenticeship was an unhappy experience, and the brothers ran away after two years. But their skills proved useful, and they were able to support themselves as journeymen tailors before accumulating the funds to open their own business.

After Johnson went into politics, he continued to tailor his own clothing – which gives him the distinction of being the only president who made his own wardrobe.

Chester Arthur, Canadian?: While Barack Obama’s presidency was pockmarked with repeated claims that he was born in Kenya, he was not the first president to be the subject of an organized hoax calling his American citizenship into question.

After the assassination death of President James Garfield in 1881, Vice President Chester Arthur occupied the Oval Office. Although he cited his birthplace as Fairfield, Vermont, Arthur’s detractors led by New York attorney Arthur P. Hinman began a smear campaign that insisted he was born across the border in Canada, thus making him ineligible to serve as president.

The conspiracy theory on Arthur’s birthplace never completely faded away. In 2009, Associated Press journalist John Curran undertook research to affirm Arthur’s birthplace. But a problem arose – while Curran determined the Canadian story was false, he was unable to produce conclusive evidence that Arthur was born in Vermont. Thus, the mystery continues – at least for those who want it to continue.

Grover Cleveland’s Surgery At Sea: During the summer of 1893, President Grover Cleveland was diagnosed with mouth cancer. The nation was in the midst of an economic crisis and Cleveland feared that the news of his cancer would make matters worse, so he conspired to have a surgery performed in secrecy.

The only place where the president could avoid the prying eyes of reporters was at sea, so Cleveland set sail on a friend’s yacht under the guise of an oceanic vacation. In reality, Cleveland’s doctors performed the cancer surgery in his mouth while on the yacht. This was followed by a second surgery to fit a hard rubber dental prosthesis to fill the void left by the removal of the cancer.

Cleveland’s recovery was rapid, and the public was never informed of his illness. The story of the secret surgery was unknown to the public until one of the attending surgeons wrote about it in 1917, nine years after Cleveland passed away.

Theodore Roosevelt Meets Bigfoot: One of the first recorded encounters between white men and the simian-type creatures that became popularly known as the Sasquatch was written by Theodore Roosevelt, of all people.

In his 1892 book “The Wilderness Hunter,” Roosevelt told the story of a North American trapper named Bauman whose campsite was reportedly trashed by an unknown animal – and the
footprint evidence suggested the animal was bipedal. Bauman’s trapping partner was later killed by an animal that broke his neck, and Bauman fled the campsite in fear. However, Bauman never saw the creature that supposedly killed his partner, and Roosevelt offered no commentary on what the creature might have been.

Elsewhere in “The Wilderness Hunter,” Roosevelt recalled a hunting trip in Washington State where he heard very strange noises outside his campsite in an area that his Indian guide recommended avoiding. Roosevelt never theorized what the source of the noises were, but he certainly found them unpleasant.

Taking A Bath With William Howard Taft: At six feet tall and weighing roughly 330 pounds, William Howard Taft was the largest man to serve as president. And during his presidency, he became the subject of the strangest rumor: his girth was so unwieldy that he became stuck in the White House bathtub and needed assistance in getting extracted.

While there is no evidence to support that tale, its genesis can be traced to a highly unusual addition to the White House during Taft’s residency: a custom-made bathtub that weighed a ton and was over 7 feet long and 3 feet wide. A photograph exists of four workmen who fit together in this tub with room to spare.

Gerald Ford’s Lady Killers: While four presidents have been assassinated and others were targets of would-be slayers, President Gerald Ford is unique for being the sole president targeted for murder by women.

On Sept. 5, 1975, a Charles Manson cult follower named Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme sought to shoot Ford when he was making a stop in Sacramento, California, but a Secret Service agent wrestled the gun away from her before the trigger was pulled.

Seventeen days later, Ford returned to California for an event in San Francisco when Sara Jane Moore fired a shot at him. Moore’s bullet missed, and an ex-Marine named Oliver Sipple grabbed her arm as she was attempting a second shot.

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons