Bizarre History (7 page)

As a religious skeptic, Frederick wanted to know if humans had a soul. So he shut a prisoner up in a cask to see if the soul could be observed escaping a hole in the cask as the prisoner died.

How does digestion work? Well there’s one way to find out: “He fed two men most excellently at dinner, one of whom he sent forthwith to sleep, and the other to hunt; and that same evening he caused them to be disemboweled in his presence, wishing to know which had digested the better: and it was judged by the physicians in favour of him who had slept.”

(All quoted material is from the thirteenth-century Italian Franciscan Salimbene’s
Chronicles.)

These hobbies and quirks of our leaders wouldn’t necessarily make them unfit for office, although they should raise a few eyebrows.

King Charles II, ruler of England in the 1600s, collected mummies of dead Egyptian pharaohs. He liked to cover himself in mummy dust, hoping it would make him as great as they were.

John Quincy Adams liked to relieve the stress of the presidency with an early morning swim. Each morning he would remove his clothing and jump in the nearby Potomac River. (Yes, times were different back then.) One morning, a reporter named Anne Royall snuck up on the president, snatched his clothes, and sat on them. She said she would only give the clothes back if he gave her an interview. Adams loathed talking to the press, but he answered her questions while standing deep in the river. This was perhaps the first presidential interview conducted by a female reporter. Teddy Roosevelt also swam naked in the Potomac—with members of his Cabinet.

James Garfield was the first ambidextrous president of the United States. However, not only could he write with both hands, if you asked him a question, he could simultaneously write the answer in ancient Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.

Warren Harding had a bit of a gambling problem. At one point he lost a whole set of White House china while playing poker. His advisers were known as the Poker Cabinet. Harding was also particularly fond of Laddie Boy, his pet Airedale. Laddie had his own servant and sat at his own chair during Cabinet meetings.

Calvin Coolidge liked to hide in the White House shrubbery and then jump out and scare his Secret Service agents. Coolidge also had an electronic horse installed in the White House. He rode it every day. Finally, Coolidge also enjoyed wearing Indian headdresses and Boy Scout uniforms, and he had a pet raccoon that liked to reside on his shoulders.

Jimmy Carter may have been considered the first US “bubba” president, but not only did he study nuclear physics in college, but he can read two thousand words a minute.

Kim Jong Il, the de facto leader of North Korea (the official leader being his long-dead father), loves movies. His collection of videotapes and DVDs is said to be twenty thousand and growing. His favorite movies include the James Bond series, anything featuring Godzilla, Rambo, Clint Eastwood’s
In the Line of Fire,
and the Friday the 13th movies. In 1978, he had South Korea’s most famous movie director, Shin Sang-ok, kidnapped (along with his movie star wife). He then forced them to make movies for North Korea until they escaped in 1986.

These days, the most dangerous thing that can happen to a wayward US senator, congressman, or other politician is that they end up in jail. That wasn’t always the case.

On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, Democratic congressman from South Carolina, walked into the Senate chamber to find Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts at his desk. Brooks said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech against South Carolina, and have read it carefully, deliberately, and dispassionately, in which you have libeled my state and slandered my white-haired old relative, Senator Butler, who is absent, and I have come to punish you for it.” Brooks then proceeded to beat Senator Sumner senseless with a metal-tipped cane.

Sumner, who was angry about the escalation of violence in Kansas over the issue of whether to admit Kansas to the Union as either a free or proslavery state, called the proslavery militia from Missouri “murderous robbers.” He then went on to slam Butler, saying that he spat and stammered when he talked, which was in a sense true, since Butler had had a stroke. Butler’s cousin, Brooks, then took matters into his own hands.

The inch-thick cane was smashed to splinters, and the bloody Sumner cried out, “I am almost dead, almost dead.” Brooks was finally restrained. The resulting Senate hearing failed to muster enough votes to expel Brooks; however, he resigned. Then he ran for reelection to fill the vacant seat he had just vacated. He won. Meanwhile, it took Sumner three years to recover from the attack. Brooks received many new walking sticks from his supporters.