US Presidents with the Strangest Hobbies

Remember that scene in the A Spy Who Loved Me with Bond’s submarine car? Well, LBJ beat him to it by about ten years. The president had an amphibious car he often used to drive his guests around his ranch. As he drove, he’d pretend to lose control of the car (and its brakes) as it sped into a lake. This, of course, scared the hell out of his guests - who were reportedly delighted to learn the car was amphibious shortly after. It was as much a morbid pastime as it was a way to test the character of those he drove around. 

President Coolidge really loved riding horses, but developed an allergy that meant he was unable to ride them. So, when someone gave him a mechanical horse as a joke gift… he didn’t really see the joke. He put it in a dressing room right next to his bedroom so he could always keep it close. He rode the apparatus regularly while wearing his hat, which amused his wife and their guests to no end. At the end of the day, no one had a problem with the practice because it let the president get some exercise. 

In addition to fighting just about anyone he could in the ring, Teddy Roosevelt tested his constitution by hunting every type of animal he could find on God’s Earth. His true test as a hunter really came after his presidency when he took an 11-month safari through Africa. On that trip he trapped or shot over 11,000 animals which includes just about everything you can think of from insects to elephants. He then had the corpses stuffed as pieces of taxidermy and donated them to the Smithsonian Institution. 

John Quincy Adams had a lot of history attached to his name. He was the son of a founding father, he died on the floor of congress, and he was the sixth president of the United States. He also loved to swim around naked. It’s been reported that he would wake early every day and swim nude in the Potomac River at 5 a.m. The first female journalist ever to interview a president, Anne Royall, accomplished this historic feat by withholding Adams’ clothing until he agreed to a discourse. 

When a person breeds a male donkey and a female horse, they get a mule. People frequently use mules as pack animals because of their hardy and obedient natures (and also because they eat less). They also weren’t native to America before George Washington. After seeing how effective they were in Spain, our first president spent a pretty big chunk of his time breeding mules. The towns people and local farmers of Mount Vernon joined Washington in his crusade, using George’s animals to breed their own.

When he wasn’t leading a revolution, Thomas Jefferson loved to invent gadgets. He helped advance the science of agriculture by inventing a plow that was easier to pull. He also created an updated sundial in the form of a sphere. But his coolest work was to help out American spies during the Revolutionary War. He invented the “wheel cipher,” which was an iron pin containing 26 spinning wooden disks that could be used to decipher coded messages. That way, The British couldn't read intercepted messages.