In honor of President’s Day, I’d like to talk about the most badass president (and possibly the most badass person) in American history: Teddy Roosevelt. Aside from helping invent modern football, here are ten more awesome facts about this crazy mofo…
- He was a sickly child, but he managed to kick the shit out of his asthma through sheer force of will.
- After his wife and mother died on the same damn day, he ditched everything and moved out West to become a cowboy.
- While living in North Dakota, he became a deputy sheriff and once captured three boat thieves after chasing them through a frozen river. He ended up watching them for forty hours straight without sleep while awaiting trial.
- Once he was done kicking ass out West, he became commissioner of the NYPD. But instead of sitting around at his desk all day, he went undercover as a beat cop and walked the streets, whipping the asses of cops he found slacking off or taking bribes.
- He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” because he and his band of Rough Riders helped seal our victory in the Spanish-American War at the Battle of San Juan Hill.
- After being elected president, he invited Booker T. Washington to chill at the White House, marking the first time a black man had ever eaten dinner as an official White House guest.
- His menagerie of pets included a bear named Jonathan Edwards; a lizard named Bill; guinea pigs named Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O’Grady; Maude the pig; Josiah the badger; Eli Yale the blue macaw; Baron Spreckle the hen; a one-legged rooster; a hyena; a barn owl; Peter the rabbit; and Algonquin the pony.
- While he was president, he often went skinny dipping in the Patomac River.
- He once stood outside and gave a two-hour speech in Milwaukee immediately after being shot in the chest in an assassination attempt. It was only after the speech ended that he went to the hospital to get the bullet wound treated.
- After his death, one politician remarked, “Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight.”
