Photo: Getty
No matter which side of the political spectrum you lie, one can’t deny that our current president is arguably the most polarizing this generation has ever seen. But boy oh boy, if social media existed over the last 200 years it’s just as arguable that dozens of other presidents would have been just as controversial.
Did you know that one president named his penis and showed it to others in the White House? Another one of our former presidents allegedly date-raped a woman, got her pregnant and tried to cover it up by taking away the baby and putting the mother in a mental institution. It’s all scary. It’s all true. And it’s likely just the tip of the ice berg.
You know about the JFK affairs and Trump’s Access Hollywood tape. But below you’ll see facts about our presidents which are much harder to believe.
Whether simply surprising or criminally jaw-dropping, here are just a few mind-blowing facts about some of the presidents you likely never knew.
10 Mind-Blowing Facts About U.S. Presidents You Never Knew
It’s a tad stressful: 21 U.S. Presidents Before and After Their Terms
Josh Helmuth is a contributor for Mandatory and the editor of Crave Sports.
Insane president facts
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Gerald Ford was the "Zoolander" of his generation
Photo: Wikipedia/Cosmo
A top notch college football star, not only could Ford had played in the NFL, but after he graduated from Yale in 1941 and joined the Navy a year later, he earned extra cash as a model, at one point appearing on the cover of Cosmo in his Navy uniform. Swoon.
Source: History
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Andrew Johnson was so blitzed he couldn't get through his inauguration
Illustration: Wikipedia
The VP-elect under Abraham Lincoln was so drunk on inauguration day that he couldn't finish his speech while swearing in the new senators. In fact, he was so trashed that Lincoln allegedly showed an expression of "unutterable sorrow" in the midst of a "shocked and silent" audience ... "The inauguration went off very well except that the Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform his duties & disgraced himself & the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech," Michigan Republican Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote home to his wife. "I was never so mortified in my life, had I been able to find a hole I would have dropped through it out of sight." ... So what happened? The story goes that Johnson was ill from typhoid fever, so he downed a vat of whiskey at a party the night before the inauguration. He was hung over the next day, so while he stumbled into the Capital office, he asked for, you guessed it, another whiskey. This guy was a damn hero for simply being able to stand on two feet.
Source: Senate, Ball State
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Richard Nixon plotted to assassinate a journalist
Photo: Wikipedia
Unearthed tapes from the National Archives document that Nixon's aides plotted to destroy a journalist, if not kill him, because of his whistle-blowing. Nixon's team wanted to spread false rumors about Jack Anderson, a legendary Pulitzer prize winning, investigative reporter who continued to break scandalous stories on Nixon for decades. Nixon and his goons allegedly were so fed up that they also planned an assassination on the journalist by either poisoning him with his own medicine cabinet or exposing him to a "massive dose" of LSD by smearing it all over his car steering wheel (would that even work??). The only thing that stopped them was the Water-Gate scandal which soon forced Nixon to resign.
Source: NBC News
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Lyndon B. Johnson named his penis
Photo: Wikipedia
Anyone who knew LBJ knew he wasn't shy. That included urinating in the House Office Building parking lot when need be ... or showing people "Jumbo," AKA his penis ... Yes, LBJ reportedly had a name for his manhood and would allegedly show it to colleagues while at the urinal, saying things like "Have you ever seen anything as big as this?," in the midst of speaking about pending legislation.
Source: Gawker
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Franklin Pierce may have run over an elderly woman
Illustration: Wikipedia
We know now not to drink and drive. In 1853, it was 'don't drink and ride' ... Pierce allegedly ran over an old woman with his horse. However, charges were later dropped because of the lack of evidence. Some believe the story isn't true. However, Pierce was an epic alcoholic who was denied renomination by the Democratic Party in 1856, probably because, well, Pierce just wanted to party. After being given the pink slip, history says Pierce said "There is nothing left to do but get drunk."
Source: Tech Times
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James Buchanan was gay, no really
Illustration: Wikipedia
Did you know we've already had our first gay president? Yup, James Buchanan was the guy long before 'LGBT' existed ... He never married, remaining single his entire life, but he shared a home with Alabama Senator and former Vice President William Rufus King. It was a relationship that was so close that Andrew Jackson and other colleagues called them “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy." ... Um, yeah ... To put an exclamation point on the evidence, Buchanan wrote a letter about his life after King moved to France to become the American ambassador. Dated May 13, 1844, he wrote “I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”
Source: Time
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Thomas Jefferson had incomprehensible stage fright
Illustration: Wikipedia
They say that people's two biggest fears are 1) flying and 2) speaking in public. It turns out T-Jeff could relate! ... To the latter of course, planes didn't exist yet ... But that's right, one of our founding fathers and the author of the Declaration of Independence was so terrified of public speaking that he went silent many times while a member of the Continental Congress, and during his two presidential terms supposedly only gave exactly two speeches. That's two speeches ... in eight years ... John Adams wrote, "Mr. Jefferson had been now about a Year a Member of Congress, but had attended his Duty in the House but a very small part of the time and when there had never spoken in public: and during the whole Time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three Sentences together. The most of a Speech he ever made in my hearing was a gross insult on Religion, in one or two Sentences, for which I gave him immediately the Reprehension, which he richly merited."
Source: Monticello
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John Quincy Adams liked to go skinny dipping
Illustration: Wikipedia
History says JQA was known to strip off his clothes and go for a skinny dip in the Potamac River, preferring to go in the early morning. We're very happy this tradition didn't carry on. I mean, just look at this dude!
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Source: MSN
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Grover Cleveland was an alleged rapist
Illustration: Wikipedia
Alright, brace yourselves for this one, because it has award-winning Netflix documentary written all over it, ya know, if there were cameras and production companies 100 years ago. Cleveland not only married his best friend's daughter, whom he became the legal guardian of after he died (she was 11 years old when he became her guardian and married her at 21), but he also allegedly date-raped a woman, got her pregnant, and tried to cover it up by taking away the child and putting the woman in a ward. I know your head is spinning ... So I'll just leave these excerpts here:
Cleveland reportedly sexually assaulted Maria Halpin, who later discovered she was pregnant. Cleveland then had her child put in an orphanage and forced her to be treated at a mental asylum.
Maria Halpin was thrown into the Providence Lunatic Asylum, although the facility's medical director quickly released her after an evaluation, concluding (correctly) that she was not insane and that her incarceration was the result of an abuse of power by political elites.
Cleveland won election as mayor of Buffalo on a clean-government platform in 1881. A year later, he became governor of New York. As "Grover the Good," he won the Democratic nomination for president in 1884. Once he was named to the national ticket, it didn't take long for the media to expose the existence of his illegitimate son.
Maria Halpin was no harlot. She was a widow with two young children, a church-going woman held in high esteem by all who knew her. From everything I could discover about her life, she was what in the 19th century would be termed a chaste woman.
Yeah, that's one, notoriously bad dude who was voted in as president because he was thought of as 'a good guy.'
Source: Huff Post
Source: The Daily Beast
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Teddy Roosevelt was shot during a speech, said 'I ain't got time for that!'
Photo: Wikipedia
Teddy Roosevelt not only survived an assassination attempt, but kept on with his speech for more than an hour after he was shot in the chest. While delivering a speech in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912, Roosevelt said, "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot ... I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap." ... Sure, Theodore was tough as a grizzly bear, but what really saved him were the stacked, rolled up papers in his jacket pocket, his 90-minute, 50-page speech, which slowed the bullet from going into his heart. You can see in the pic the blood-stained shirt. However, considering the crowd was stunned when Teddy said he had been shot, we're wondering if this gunshot was the softest of all-time or if the crowd was so loud that no one heard it?
Source: History
