156
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
Millard Fillmore
had a historic
audience with the pope
shortly before being nominated for president on a violently
anti-Catholic ticket.
Franklin Pierce
was pals with author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
In fact, the two were vacationing together in the White
Mountains when Hawthorne died in his sleep.
James Buchanan
had one eye set
higher in his head than the
other, so he walked around with his neck cocked to one side.
Abraham Lincoln
had a twangy high-pitched voice—nothing
at all like Sam Waterston’s.
Andrew Johnson
loved the circus.
Ulysses S. Grant
changed his name from Hiram Ulysses be-
cause he was ashamed of the initials H.U.G. Also, he hated
music. All music.
Rutherford B. Hayes
was a huge fan of croquet.
James A. Garfield,
a former classics teacher, could simulta-
neously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.
Chester A. Arthur
had over 80 pairs
of pants and insisted on
changing several times a day.
Grover Cleveland
had a prosthetic jaw and an illegitimate
daughter, neither of which seriously aff ected his popularity.
He’s also the only president to have been elected to two non-
consecutive terms.
Benjamin Harrison
had the fi rst electric lights in the White
House, but was scared to turn them on or off for
fear of elec-
trocution. Instead, he made the servants do it.
William McKinley’s
wife was an epileptic whose contorted
face he sometimes covered up with a handkerchief during
formal dinner parties.
157
Theodore Roosevelt’s
mother and fi rst wife died on the same
day,
in the same house, on the fourth anniversary of his en-
gagement, which was also Valentine’s Day. Rough.
As president,
William Howard Taft
weighed 326 pounds and
got stuck in the White House bathtub.
He had a bigger one
installed.
Woodrow Wilson
was a gifted mimic fond of telling racist
jokes in Irish dialect. He also liked to imitate drunks.
Warren G. Harding
kept his romantic trysts in the closet—
literally. He often met his mistress in a closet off the presi-
dential offi
ce.
Calvin Coolidge,
while president, enjoyed riding on a me-
chanical horse and whooping like a cowboy.
He also thought it
was great fun to hit the buzzer for the servants and then hide.
Herbert Hoover
and his wife were both profi cient in Chinese
and would often use it to talk privately in the presence of
guests.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
had a collection of over 25,000 stamps.
He added to it by simply having the Postmaster General and
State Department mail him every new issue.
Harry S Truman
once wrote a threatening letter to the music
critic of the
Washington Post
in response to a negative review
of his daughter’s voice recital, stating “I never met you, but if
I do, you’ll need a new nose. . . .”
His entire middle name, inci-
dentally, was S.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
hated cats. In retirement in Gettys-
burg, Pennsylvania, he enjoyed shooting at any that came
near his house.
John F. Kennedy
only watched the fi rst halves of movies.
Th
en he’d get bored.
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