As a presidential historian, I love this stuff. Via Buzzfeed, some shocking facts about U.S. presidents:
2. Abraham Lincoln was also a licensed bartender.
3. Some historians claim Harry Truman was inducted into the KKK, even though he was “never active.”
4. Jimmy Carter is the first known president to go on record as seeing a UFO.
5. Lyndon B. Johnson called his penis “Jumbo” (allegedly for good reason), and would whip it out at random times. During a Cabinet meeting, when asked why the U.S. went into Vietnam, Johnson reportedly whipped it out and bellowed, “This is why!”
6. Most historians believe James Buchanan was gay. Buchanan, a bachelor, was rumored to have a very close relationship with William Rufus King, a senator from Alabama.
8. Grover Cleveland date-raped a woman and got her pregnant. 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.
10. Franklin Roosevelt’s mom clothed him in dresses until he was five.
That’s a portrait of FDR at age 2. He was once also spotted wearing a skirt and a hat trimmed with a marabou feather and having shoulder-length hair.
11. Woodrow Wilson was the first to show a motion picture in the White House: The Birth of a Nation, which has become the most banned film in American history.
14. Teddy Roosevelt had five guinea pigs named Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, Admiral Dewey, and Father O’Grady.
18. Benjamin Harrison was so afraid of electric lights, he’d have his staff turn the switches on and off for him and his wife.
20. Warren G. Harding supposedly made love to a young girl, Nan Britton, on a regular basis in a White House closet. Secret Service agents reportedly had to stop his wife from beating down the closet door on one occasion.
I wasn’t aware of the FDR photo. His mother clearly had some issues.