Read on Twitter
It's Presidents Day in the US and once upon a time I read a biography of every single US president so I may as well make use of that useless knowledge. Here is a thread of the wildest tweet-sized fact I know about each president:
George Washington: lost nearly all of his teeth, had terrifying spring-loaded 18th century dentures that were in constant danger of jumping out of his mouth. He mumbled through all of his speeches because he was afraid of opening his mouth too wide.
John Adams: everybody but everybody thought he was a prudish, entitled, arrogant little jerk, including all of the other founders and especially his closest relatives and *extra specially* Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson: an asshole. Died completely broke after a lifetime of living on borrowed money way outside of his earnings. Tried to save things at the last moment by selling all his books to the state. Died the same day as Adams.
James Madison: wrote the constitution and the bill of rights. I don't care what you heard. His super power was giving his ideas of government to other people and making them think it was their idea, and letting them take credit. But he wrote nearly all of it.
James Monroe: also died broke, in this case because Congress refused to pay any of his expenses and he had to run the White House from his own funds. Invented a terrible but extremely long-lived Doctrine.
John Quincy Adams: "Quincy" was not really part of his name. His name was John Adams, just like his dad, but people needed a way to distinguish them and "Quincy" was the name of where he was born so they used that. His father's sky-high expectations fucked him up forever.
Andrew Jackson: fought a number of duels one of which left him with lead shot permanently embedded in his chest. Lead poisoning can lead to a lot of the violent, irrational symptoms that characterized his life but it's also quite likely he was already an asshole before that.
Martin Van Buren: initialed documents as his nickname, "Old Kinderhook", thus further popularizing an existing expression "Oil Korrect", now the expression "OK" or "Okay".
William Henry Harrison: got more done in his 31 days in office before dying than most presidents. Didn't die of the flu because he didn't wear on overcoat, more likely caught the flu a few weeks after inauguration and died of exhaustion due to over-working.
John Tyler: decided that the Vice President becomes the new President, not just acting President, when the previous President dies. The constitution was vague on this point and he resolved it by ignoring anybody who didn't address him as "Mr President".
James Polk: had basically no ideas or political power of his own and was essentially Jackson's third term. Lucked into doubling the size of the United States by buying Louisiana from the French, who were extremely broke at the time.
Zachary Taylor: died 16 months into his term after drinking raw milk on the hottest day of the year, amazingly not the worst decision of his very short presidency.
Millard Fillmore: a lot more responsible for the civil war than Buchanan, who got all the blame. Looked a *LOT* like Alex Baldwin.
Franklin Pierce: the only president until Trump to support armed insurrection against his own country, he supported the south during the Civil War.
James Buchanan: gets more blame for the civil war than is justified, he got left holding the bag after decades of kicking the can. Three members of congress died at his inauguration because the water in Washington DC was full of disease.
Abraham Lincoln: gets all the credit for freeing the slaves and winning the war when he was actually SUPER racist and wanted to deport all the freed slaves to Africa and winning the war was basically all Grant.
Andrew Johnson: a completely racist shithead who set civil rights back a hundred years, was impeached and should have been removed but it turns out we don't do that for any reason.
Ulysses S Grant: was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but thought having the initials "HUG" was a bit un-manly so when a military administrative error got his name wrong he decided not to bother correcting it. The name "Ulysses" was picked from a hat of random names by his mother.
Rutherford B Hayes: his election was *hotly* disputed by southern states who sent opposing sets of electors to Washington with different election results. The resulting shitshow resulted in VERY SPECIFIC laws about counting votes in elections which came in handy in 2020.
James Garfield: when he got shot he was treated by a doctor whose first name was "Doctor", he was Doctor Doctor Willard Bliss. He was a terrible doctor who didn't believe in germ theory and used un-sterilized instruments, resulting in infection and eventual death for Garfield.
Chester Arthur: a middle of the road president who did nothing of note but had an amazing letter correspondence with a woman called Julia Sand who basically sent him fan mail until he agreed to visit her house.
Grover Cleveland: his real name was "Steven Cleveland", so picking his absurd middle name of Grover was actually an astute political name. The candy bar "Baby Ruth" is named after his daughter, not the baseball player.
William McKinley: never wrote down any of his reasoning for making any of his presidential decisions, something that has been driving historians batshit for over a century.
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt: a ridiculous, enthusiastic camp counselor of a man. He created the National Park system and so has a reputation for "conservation" but he was not much of a conservationist in the mdoern sense, mostly wanted somewhere he could shoot animals in peace.
William Howard Taft: was not really fat for most of his life, gained a ton of weight during his presidency as a result of stress-eating, lost it all afterwards by following what was basically the Atkins diet.
Woodrow Wilson: suffered a stroke while president and his wife Edith basically took over the US government because there was no 25th amendment to deal with an incapacitated-but-not-dead president. She vetoed constitutional amendments on her own authority.
Warren G Harding: a strong candidate for horniest president, which is a VERY competitive field. Had sex with his mistress in a closet next to the oval office.
Calvin Coolidge: got a reputation for loving animals, so the public kept gifting him pets, including dogs and cats, canaries, a goose, raccoons, a donkey, a bobcat, lions, a wallaby, a bear and a pygmy hippopotamus named Billy.
Herbert Hoover: is unfairly blamed for the great depression. Before becoming president, at one point during World War 1 he had diplomatic immunity from every side of the war so he could run a successful relief program to feed the entire nation of Belgium.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: became assistant secretary of the navy because that was what Teddy did before becoming president and it worked for him too. Fooled the majority of the US public into thinking he could walk after he became paralyzed from polio.
Harry Truman: invented catfishing. Wrote dozens of letters pretending to be a woman to his friends for months and then cruelly revealed it all as a hoax in front of all of their friends. A shithead in a variety of other important ways too.
Dwight Eisenhower: spent the entire war openly having an affair with a lady called Kay Summersby who he dumped as soon as the war ended and it became clear having a mistress would be a barrier to his becoming president. "Patton would have said a warmer goodbye to his horse."
John F Kennedy: another strong contender for horniest president, had endless affairs and was also probably high on amphetamines for his entire presidency.
Lyndon B Johnson: completely lost his mind over the course of his presidency, was tremendously fucked up psychologically and was emotionally abusive to everyone who worked for him.
Richard Nixon: "most fucked up psychologically" is a category of US presidents even more crowded than "horniest" but Nixon's inferiority complex is a strong contender, powering his entire ethics-free career.
Gerald Ford: an affable, hefty football player who went into politics when football didn't work out and kept falling upwards until he landed in the presidency, which he had absolutely no idea what to do with.
Jimmy Carter: took an inept translator to Poland, accidentally giving a major speech in which he told the people of Poland that he wanted to fuck them all.
Ronald Reagan: definitely stole the election from Carter with the help of Kissinger. Has had his title of "least helpful reaction to a pandemic" stolen by Trump.
George HW Bush: went parachute jumping at ages 72, 75, 80, 85 and 90. Is a perfect example of how just being a pretty shitty president still puts you above average because we so often elect nightmares like his son.
Bill Clinton: was governor of Arkansas at the time when a Titan nuclear missile exploded in its silo in an accident that could have wiped the state off the map. He didn't hear about it until later.
George W Bush: an inspiration to people with no particular skills or aptitude everywhere that you, too, can become president if your dad was.
Barack Obama: was called "Barry" in kindergarten and elementary school and doesn't like it when people call him that now.
Donald Trump: the only president to be impeached twice, also the only president to lead an armed insurrection against the government while still in office, besting Pierce's previous record for "biggest traitor".
Joe Biden: give me a minute, he just got here.
If you would like more fun facts about presidents, you can visit my totally arbitrary ranking of presidents and links to twitter threads about each of them at http://presidents.fyi
Post-script 1: Grover Cleveland's two terms meant I forgot about Benjamin Harrison, who served in between. He was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the one who died, and managed to get even less done in a full term than Harrison did in 31 days.
Post-script 2: I got the date of the Louisiana Purchase... completely wrong? It happened under Jefferson, not Polk. Polk massively expanded the size of the US by adding Texas, Oregon and California, which is probably how I got those events swapped in my head.
Post-script 3: okay this thread is totally out of control, thank you/I apologize as appropriate.
Post-script 4: lotta kind-hearted people who are fans of trivia accidentally misgendering me in the replies here, folks. I promise I'm a man, I just have a funny name.
Post-script 5: lotta people dubious on the "Quincy not his name" thing, gonna have to read that bio again to get the sources for that.
