Teddy Roosevelt Didn’t Exist (and Other Interesting Presidential Facts)

Normally for Presidents’ Day I dress up like Abraham Lincoln and wait outside Ford’s Theater with a hip flask trying to start fights with Southerners. Unfortunately this year I left my Lincoln costume in Oklahoma, and so celebrated in a less flashy capacity: learning.

I spent today researching America’s various presidents, and herewith share with you some of my findings.

1. Teddy Roosevelt Didn’t Exist

After reading five minutes’ worth of Roosevelt biographical material anyone with minimal common sense will deduce that he is clearly a work of fiction. My theory is that historians got sloppy and forgot whoever actually held the presidency between 1901-1907 (Reagan, probably). To cover up their goof they plagiarised a cartoon character, and no one has noticed until now.

Seriously. Google “Teddy Roosevelt” and tell me his toothy grin and insane biography are not clear evidence of outlandish cartoonery.

Among other things, “Teddy Roosevelt” kept a pet badger at the White House, was blind in his left eye from a boxing injury sustained while in office, enjoyed skinny-dipping in the Potomac during the winter, and on a hunting trip to Colorado killed seventeen mountain lions. Four of them with his knife.

In 1912 while delivering a campaign speech, a local saloon owner fired a shot at Teddy Roosevelt and wounded him. As the bullet only constituted a flesh wound, Roosevelt went ahead and finished his speech before seeing a doctor. (The would-be assassin, John Schrank, squeezed off a round at the president because, according to him, “any many looking for a third term ought to be shot.”)

Teddy Roosevelt clearly did not exist.

2. George Washington is Mostly Made Up

After exhaustive research I am more or less confident that historians did not make up George Washington.

However a lot of what we know about him is verifiably false. Most portraits of Washington were painted years after his death. Cherry trees weren’t brought to the US until 1912, so the “cannot tell a lie story” is certifiably bunk. Even the anecdote about wooden teeth is a crock–Washington’s dentures were made out of ivory, animal teeth and (in what must have been creepy even then) other people’s teeth.

While a colonel, Washington earned himself an unpopular “not fun guy” reputation for his habit of literally whipping men under his command if they got drunk. This changed entirely during his first successful election, in which his campaign provided over 70 gallons of various rotgut to registered Virginians, propelling him to the House of Burgesses and a subsequent bright political future.

Today, giving that many Americans booze to buy off their votes isn’t economically feasible, so the current administration has provided free birth control instead, using our own tax dollars. Clever.

3. A Parrot Ruined Andrew Jackson’s Funeral

Some nitpickers might consider Andrew Jackson a bad president, because he flouted judicial authority and committed various war crimes, genocide, etc. Modern presidents are typically only allowed to do one of those things at a time.

He was definitely a badass, though. By the time he died his body was riddled with various objects people had tried to kill him with, including an arrowhead and multiple bullets. He had a musketball trapped inside of one of his lungs, which rattled around inside of his chest cavity whenever he coughed and made him hack up blood. He had a habit of fiddling with another bullet, lodged in his hand, over a twenty year period until it finally popped out and (I hope) rolled across a table during a cabinet meeting.

In a duel in 1806 he relied on the “I can take it strategy,” and simply stood still while Charles Dickenson shot him. According to dueling etiquette of the time Dickenson had to patiently wait for the next round before he could fire again, so Jackson ignored the searing hot lead embedded in his chest, took steady aim and shot Dickenson dead, right there.

The final time somebody tried to shoot him was during his second term, wherein a crazed painter shot at him, twice, and missed both times. Jackson walked straight up to the guy and proceeded to beat the living hell out of him with his cane until presidential aides succeeded in pulling him off the bloodied would-be assassin.

When he finally did die, years later, his pet parrot had to be removed from the funeral because Jackson had taught it to swear vociferously, which it proceeded to do throughout the service.

4. You Could Easily Have Prank Called Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes, known to history primarily for a funny name and large beard, also can claim as his legacy the first commander-in-chief to operate a telephone. His number was literally “1.”

This means that, in 1879, if you wanted to prank call the president of the United States, all you had to do was own a telephone. This may in part explain why Hayes kept his promise to only seek one term.

5. Alexander Graham Bell killed James A. Garfield

As a neat segway, the same fellow who invented the telephone also killed Rutherford B. Hayes’ successor, albeit inadvertently.

In 1881 a disgruntled federal employee shot President Garfield because the commander-in-chief had failed to appoint him consul to France, which he took very personally.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, had also recently concocted the first crude metal detector, which he called “the induction balance.” Bell and his new gizmo were summoned to the wounded chief executive to try and accurately locate the final location of the metal slug somewhere in Garfield’s body.

While they successfully located the bullet, Mr. Bell noted that the induction balance could still detect metal coming from somewhere else. Hence the surgery continued, with Bell frantically moving his metal detector over the president’s body in search of a presumed bullet fragment.

Eventually, about the time surgeons reached President Garfield’s spinal cord, someone at the back of the room asked, “Mr. Bell–would it matter that the president is on a metal cot?”