We were all taught about the presidents, right? But wait! Here are a few things they forgot to mention:
 
 

Some historians consider John Hanson to be the first President of the United States. He was the first to hold that title. Actually, his full title was "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." Shortly before the Revolution began, the Continental Congress was formed. The Continental Congress operated from 1774 to 1789 and had sixteen presidents. While John Hanson was the ninth of these presidents, he was the first to serve under the Articles of Confederation which united the thirteen states and he was the first to be called President of the United States. Even General George Washington referred to him by this title. However, Congress still retained full executive power. Hanson presided over the Congress and so could be considered the head of the government, but not the head of state. The presidents after Hanson were Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. In 1789, the Constitution established the Congress as we know it and George Washington became president. But back in 1783 when George Washington appeared in the Continental Congress to resign as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he handed his resignation to President Thomas Mifflin.
 
 

George Washington was one of the richest men in the country at that time. At his death, his estate was valued at about a half a million and included 33,000 acres of land. A tremendous amount at that time. His family motto was "Exitus acta probat," meaning "the end justifies the means."

Washington had a fiery temper that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "was naturally irritable" and when "it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath." On one occasion, Jefferson said Washington became "much inflamed, [and] got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself." After his temper flared up, it usually subsided quickly and he would regain control. On another occasion, Washington chewed out Alexander Hamilton for keeping him waiting for ten minutes. Hamilton, who said it was only two minutes, promptly resigned from Washington's staff.

Like Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and even Abraham Lincoln, Washington enjoyed dirty jokes and often told obscene anecdotes. While he and Martha destroyed most of his letters, a few did survive. In the late 1920s, multi-millionaire J. P. Morgan bought some, but he burned them saying they were "smutty."
 
 

The latter half of John Adams's administration was known as the Federalist Reign of Terror. Because the Alien and Sedition Acts were used by the Federalists to jail anyone who criticized the government, Thomas Jefferson, who was then the vice president, stopped signing his letters out of fear that postal clerks were searching his mail for evidence to charge him with treason. His fears were justified in that more than twenty Republican editors were indicted for criticizing Adams and his administration. Most of them were convicted and sent to jail. Many agents and writers fled the country to avoid prosecution. Members of Congress were also under surveillance and Representative Matthew Lyon was sent to jail for four months and fined $1,000 for criticizing the President in a Vermont newspaper. His constituents took up a collection to pay his fine and re-elected him to Congress while he was still in jail. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired when Jefferson became president. If they hadn't, he would have repealed them.

Ben Franklin said President Adams was "always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses." While Adams did have his good qualities, he was also petty, vain, outspoken, abrasive and crusty. He once described Alexander Hamilton as "the bastard brat of a Scottish peddler" and Thomas Paine's Common Sense as "a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass."
 
 

During the election, Jefferson refused to discuss his religious beliefs, leading many people to believe he didn't have any. This prompted the Rev. John M. Mason to claim that anyone who voted for Jefferson "would do more to destroy the gospel of Jesus than a whole fraternity of infidels." When Jefferson was elected, some believers hid their Bibles so they wouldn't be seized by "the satanic Jefferson." Actually, Jefferson was religious and did attend church, though he didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. "To the genuine precepts of Jesus Himself," he wrote, "I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one would be; sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others; ascribing to Him every human excellence and believing He never claimed any other."
 
 

As president, John Quincy Adams liked to go skinny dipping in the Potomac. On one occasion someone stole his clothes and he had to ask a passing boy to run back to the White House to get him some more.
 
 

Upon becoming president, Andrew Jackson immediately ordered twenty spittoons for the White House parlors. His wife, Rachel, almost became the only first lady who smoked a pipe, but she died just before he took office.
 
 

William Henry Harrison was killed by his own inaugural address. The 68-year-old general delivered it on a cold winter's day and he droned on for two hours without a hat, coat or gloves. He caught pneumonia and died a month later. In his address, he had promised not to run for a second term.
 
 

Following Harrison's death, John Tyler was down on his knees playing marbles when he was found and told he had just become the President of the United States. He later joined the Confederacy during the Civil War and sat in its provisional Congress before becoming a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
 
 

Atchison was president for only one day. The term of James K. Polk ended at noon on March 4, 1849, but because this was a Sunday, Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in until the next day. Since Polk's vice president had resigned a few days earlier, by law the president pro tempore of the Senate automatically became president during this vacancy. That was Atchison. He later said, "I slept most of that Sunday." On his gravestone, it says, "President of U.S. one day."
 
 

When it was first proposed that this old general run for president, his response was, "Stop your nonsense and drink your whiskey!" He loved chewing tobacco and was known as a "sure-shot spitter." As a military officer, he disliked wearing uniforms. "He looks more like an old farmer going to market with eggs to sell than anything I can...think of," one officer said, while another man described him as wearing "a dusty green coat, a frightful pair of trousers and on horseback he looks like a toad."
 
 

While Pierce was president, he accidently ran down an old woman with his horse and was arrested. The officer released the President when he discovered who he had in custody. A few chief executives later, President U. S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage.
 
 

President James K. Polk wrote in his diary, "Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but in small matters without judgment and sometimes acts like an old maid." After Polk made Buchanan his Secretary of State, Andrew Jackson strongly objected to the appointment. To which Polk replied, "But, General, you yourself appointed him minister to Russia in your first term." "Yes, I did," Jackson explained. "It was as far as I could send him out of my sight, and where he could do the least harm. I would have sent him to the North Pole if we had kept a minister there!" Buchanan was an alcoholic who consumed large amounts of alcohol with no outward signs of drunkeness. This prompted one journalist to write, "More than one ambitious tyro who sought to follow his...example gathered an early fall."
 
 

Andrew Johnson was a tailor and made all his own clothes until he became a congressman. He was a Southerner and had held slaves but he was against the South's seceding from the Union, prompting many Southerners (including those in his home state of Tennessee) to consider him a traitor. Returning home after Lincoln's inauguration, a mob in Lynchburg, Virginia, dragged him from the train, beating, kicking and spitting on him. They were about to hang him when an old man shouted, "His neighbors at Greenville have made arrangements to hang their Senator on his arrival. Virginians have no right to deprive them of that privilege." When Tennessee suceeded from the Union, Johnson was forced to flee his own state.
 
 

U. S. Grant was the first person to be promoted to the rank of full general after George Washington. Yet, despite having sent his men into some of the Civil War's bloodiest battles, he hated the sight of blood, disliked hunting and was sickened at the sight of a Mexican bullfight. If he ate meat, it had to be cooked black because rare meat made him queasy. A shy, mild-mannered man with little interest in the military and a dislike of wearing uniforms, his father had to force him to go to West Point. Grant once said, "I am more of a farmer than a soldier. I take little or no interest in military affairs." Though Grant fought in the Mexican War, he thought it was "one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory." He felt the Civil War was America's punishment for what the country did in Mexico, saying, "We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."
 
 

That President Clinton avoided the draft during the Vietnam War by going to college in England is well known, but he's not the only president who got out of being drafted. During the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was drafted but paid a substitute $150 to take his place. Like Clinton's maneuver, this was completely legal at the time and was actually quite common in both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. Two of Cleveland's brothers were off fighting for the Union and he stayed behind to support his mother and sister.

He was definitely not a conscientious objector, though. Later, when he was Sheriff of Erie County, New York, one of his duties was to fill in as executioner when the usual executioner was unavailable. In this capacity, he killed two men by placing and tightening the nooses around their necks and then dropping the trapdoors. This earned him the nickname "the Hangman of Buffalo."
 
 

Teddy Roosevelt was exactly like the 96 lb. weakling in the old Charles Atlas advertisements. He once confessed that "owing to my asthma I was not able to go to school, and I was nervous and self-conscious." A weak, scrawny kid with poor eyesight, after a humiliating run-in with some bullies, he decided, "I'll make myself a body" and began working out. He developed a love of sports, adventure and war.

For many years he tried unsuccessfully to push the country into war. He wrote to a friend in 1897, "In strict confidence...I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." Dying to prove himself in battle, eventually the Spanish-American War came along and he immediately rounded up some men to go and fight in defense of Cuba. Of his famous charge up Kettle Hill near San Juan, he said, "I waved my hat and we went up the hill with a rush...I killed a Spaniard with my own hand...like a jackrabbit." Following the charge he proudly said, "Look at those damned Spanish dead." And later he added, "The charge itself was great fun. Oh, but we have had a bully fight!" Though he did have to admit, "The percentage of loss of our regiment was about seven times that of the other five volunteer regiments."

Though the Rough Riders had trained as mounted cavalry regiment for two months prior to going to Cuba, most of them were on foot during the charge because there wasn't room on the ship for their horses go with them. Also, Roosevelt wasn't actually the leader of the regiment. That was Colonel Leonard Wood.

In all, Roosevelt's campaign in Cuba lasted one week, with one day of heavy fighting. Still, he published a book on it and became a national hero. He summed it all up saying, "San Juan was the great day of my life."

When he was nominated as McKinley's vice-president, the chairman of the Republican National Committee exclaimed, "Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between this madman and the White House?" After McKinley's assassination, one citizen pleaded with him not to start any wars and he replied, "What! A war, and I cooped up here in the White House? Never!" True to his word, there were no armed conflicts during his seven-and-a-half-year presidency.

Gradually, many—including the chairman of the Republican National Committee—grew to like him. But he did offend many others by inviting Booker T. Washington, the illustrious African American educator, to dinner at the White House and by trying to remove "In God We Trust" from U.S. coins. He also launched an anti-trust suit against J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company. In addition, he was responsible for the overthrow of the Panamanian government so the Panama Canal could be built, and because of his policies, he annexed the Dominican Republic, though he said he did so with as much desire "as a gorged boa constrictor might have, to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to."

Roosevelt was shot by a madman while campaigning for a third term in office and insisted on delivering his campaign speech with the bleeding, undressed bullet hole in his chest before he allowed anyone to rush him to the hospital. When World War I came along, he volunteered to lead a unit into battle, but President Wilson refused to allow him. After one of his sons was killed in the war, Roosevelt's health rapidly declined and he died a year later.

Theodore Roosevelt was America's youngest president. Kennedy, at age 43, was just the youngest person to be elected president. Roosevelt wasn't elected to his first term and was 42 years old when he assumed the office.
 
 

Woodrow Wilson was a hard-core racist and white supremacist, and his wife was even worse. She often told "darky" stories, while he segregated the federal government and tried to pass legislation curtailing the civil rights of African Americans. Through his efforts, the Democratic Party was essentially closed to African Americans for an additional two decades and parts of federal government were segregated through the 1950s. The only time he met African American leaders in the White House ended with him practically throwing them out of his office. With the wave of racism coming out of the White House, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a tremendous resurgence, anti-black race riots swept the country and lynchings of African Americans spread as far north as Duluth.

Wilson prejudices also extended to other ethnic groups, which he referred to as "hyphenated Americans." He insisted, "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready [sic]."

Under Wilson's leadership, the U.S. made more military interventions in Latin America than at any other time in American history. U.S. troops landed in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, and eleven times in Mexico. The U.S. military was used to select Nicaragua's president and to force that country to accept a treaty favorable to the United States.

In a largely forgotten war against the Soviets, the U.S. invaded the Soviet Union in an attempt to assist White Russian forces in overthrowing the Russian Revolution. In the summer of 1918, American forces, under a joint command with the Japanese, penetrated to Murmansk, Archangel, Vladivostok, and then west to Lake Baikal. After reaching the Volga, the White Russian forces disintegrated and the U.S. troops were forced to flee from Vladivostok on April 1, 1920. This action convinced the Soviets that the U.S. and the Western powers were determined to destroy them if given a chance.
 
 

From the ages of 22 to 35, Warren Harding had five nervous breakdowns that landed him in Dr. Kellogg's famous clinic in Battle Creek, Michigan. Harding's wife continuously went to fortune tellers and tailored her life around their advice.
 
 

It's said Calvin Coolidge loved to eat breakfast in bed while having his head rubbed with Vaseline.
 
 

Herbert Hoover apparently ordered two men—naval intelligence officer Glenn Howell and his civilian aide Robert J. Peterkin—to burglarize a Democratic Party office in New York in 1930. Jeffery M. Dorwart, a Rutgers University professor, discovered Howell's long-overlooked diary in naval archives in 1983. In it Howell wrote that Hoover ordered the break-in after "he received a confidential report alleging that the Democrats had accumulated a file of data so damaging that if made public it would destroy both his reputation and his entire Administration." He said they searched the office but found nothing. He also said that other naval officers broke into the homes and offices of radicals and Japanese citizens looking for national security information and that these break-ins were approved by President Hoover and then by President Franklin Roosevelt. Nixon, on the other hand, was charged with covering up break-ins, but not ordering or approving them.
 
 

Keeping the presidency all in the family, FDR was a relative of William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Zachary Taylor, William Henry Harrison, Martin Van Buren, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, John Adams and George Washington.
 
 

Kennedy was considered a war hero because of his actions after his patrol boat PT-109 was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Actually, the incident did not occur during a battle and since it would be practically impossible for a destroyer to hit a fast, highly maneuverable patrol boat, some have suggested the crew was napping or possibly drunk. Many historians wonder how Kennedy escaped being court martialed.

Also, Kennedy was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Profiles in Courage—a book that he didn't write. It's believed his ghostwriter was Theodore Sorensen, one of his speech writers.
 
 

According to articles that appeared in Newsweek and National Review in 1977, Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948 by fraud. In a statewide recount, Johnson gained 202 votes in Jim Wells County that officials said they had missed in the first count. These 202 votes were all in the same handwriting and in the same ink, plus they were all in alphabetical order...and they were all votes for Johnson. One of the votes was reportedly cast by William F. Buckley, Jr.'s grandfather, who had died 44 years earlier. A brief investigation saw nothing irregular in any of this and Johnson was declared the winner by 87 votes. A former Johnson aide later said, "Of course they stole the election. That's the way they did it down there [in Texas]. In 1941, when Lyndon ran the first time for the Senate, he went to bed one night thinking he was 5,000 votes ahead...and when he woke up next morning 10,000 votes behind. He learned a thing or two between 1941 and 1948."
 
 

Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate coverup is common knowledge. One thing that is not quite as well-known is that he was also accused of being involved in illegally raising the price of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder Cheeseburgers. According to a book published by the New York Times titled The Offences of Richard M. Nixon (1973), among 28 criminal violations by the President is one for receiving bribes from Ray Kroc, Chairman of the Board of McDonald's. After McDonald's raised the price of their cheeseburger from 59¢ to 65¢ without authorization or notification, the Price Commission ordered the price lowered. But after Kroc gave over $200,000 to Nixon's campaign, the Price Commission reversed its decision. This money was "solicited and obtained...in violation of article II, section 4 of the Constitution and sections 201, 372, 872 and 1505 of the Criminal Code." The book also lists ten similar instances of bribery and fraud, plus one of embezzlement. Of course, Nixon didn't believe anything he did was wrong. In 1977, he said, "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
 
 

For the former actor and actress, Ronald and Nancy Reagan's images were extremely important and both of them underwent plastic surgery to give themselves a more youthful appearance. According to one of their physicians, "Both of them have had numerous face lifts. From the scars behind his ears, I'd say the President has had two lifts, and she's probably had three or four." And this probably doesn't count when she had her eyes lifted just before Reagan announced he was running for governor of California.

Both Reagan and Nancy relied heavily on astrologers when making decisions, but they were not the first in the White House to do so. The wives of both Lincoln and Harding also relied on them. Reagan first became interested in astrology when he was a young actor and he later got Nancy interested in it. From then on, their schedules were dictated by their astrologers—who included Jeane Dixon, Carroll Righter, Ed Helin and Joan Quigley. British witch Sybil Leek claimed credit for Reagan changing his inauguration as governor from noon to just after midnight. Ed Helin, who began doing Reagan's charts in 1949, said, "As President, he was primarily concerned with the timing of events and how his popularity would be affected by his actions. He called me to determine the best timing for invading Granada, for bombing Libya, for launching the Challenger—things like that." Helin was paid by the Republican National Committee and was still doing work for them in 1990.

The President's reliance on astrology was first revealed to the public by Reagan's former chief of staff, Donald Regan, but it was later confirmed by several other White House employees and the President's son, Ron. These revelations prompted Speaker of the House Jim Wright to comment, "I'm glad the President was consulting somebody. I was getting worried there for awhile."

It was ironic that a short while later, during the 1988 Bush/Dukakis presidential campaigns, Reagan would refer to Michael Dukakis as an "invalid" after rumors were circulated that Dukakis had once seen a psychiatrist. The irony of this was further emphasized when it was later revealed Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. He actually began exhibiting the symptoms as early as 1984 and they plagued his second term in office.

But then, maybe the reliance on astrology by the Reagans and the Republican party isn't all that unusual, considering the CIA spent $750,000 on psychic research between 1972 and 1977 and the Pentagon spent $20 million on just one of its psychic projects—code named Star Gate—from about 1985 to 1995. Pentagon psychic projects date back at least to 1952.
 
 

There were four other American presidents who were not presidents of the United States. The first was Sam Houston, who served twice as the president of the Republic of Texas. The second and third were Mirabeau Lamar and Anson Jones, who were also Texas presidents. And the fourth was Jefferson Davis—President of the Confederate States of America.
 

Copyright 1997 by John Richard Stephens. This excerpt is from the book Weird History 101.
 

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