[MUSIC PLAYING] President of the United
States is a challenging job that takes up a
considerable amount of time. This is one reason
why you rarely hear about US presidents
doing side gigs, like hanging drywall with
their cousin on the weekends. The thing is, it's also
a stressful job, filled with intense daily pressure. Even the
commander-in-chief needs to take a break sometimes. Over the years, a
number of US presidents have developed and
fostered hobbies to occupy some of their
time and attention when the daily grind
in Washington, DC just becomes overwhelming. And some of those pastimes
were pretty unusual. Today, we're
looking back at some of the quirkiest,
strangest, and most outright unexpected presidential
hobbies in US history. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel, and
leave us a comment letting us know what other
presidential stories you would like to hear next. OK, time to dazzle
the Secretary of State with our Pokemon collection. Just because you're
the president doesn't mean you suddenly
stop getting bored. And while it has its
fair share of amenities, it isn't like the White
House has a water slide. And despite its name, Camp David
lacks both an archery field and arts and crafts tent. Maybe they have bug juice, but
if they do, it's well-hidden. The point is,
President's need some way to occupy their downtime
in between performing the duties of a head of state. And as it turns out, they've
been bringing their own side projects and hobbies with
them to the Oval Office from the very beginning. In 1784, King
Charles III of Spain gifted our very first
president, George Washington, with an Andalusian Donkey,
whom he named Royal Gift. Because while George
Washington may have been great at military strategy, he was
less great with pet names. Washington had long sought
to own a Spanish Donkey, as he hoped to mate one with a
mare and begin breeding mules. Mules, you see, were not
native to the Americas and proved too
difficult to track down in the burgeoning United
States at the time. Washington believed
that the animals, which had relatively
easygoing personalities and required less
food than horses and other beasts of
burden, were the secret to revolutionizing agricultural
work and transportation in the new country he had
just fought so hard to create. So after receiving Royal Gift-- again, a terrible name-- his plantation at Mount
Vernon became a new hub for American mule breeding. The donkey himself became
something of a local celebrity, touring around the country and
even being featured frequently in newspapers. Ha, kind of sounds
like the president wasn't the only person in the
nation who needed a hobby. Our third President,
Thomas Jefferson, also made himself
useful during what was meant to be his leisure time. Jefferson was a great lover of
mechanical devices and gadgets and even tried his
hand as an inventor. Though he worked in a
variety of disciplines, some of Jefferson's most famous
and fascinating contributions were tools for espionage
that aided American spies during the Revolutionary War. Jefferson's wheel
cipher, for example, was an iron pin with
26 wooden disks, used to decipher coded messages. Without their own version
of the contraption, the British couldn't
read intercepted notes. It was also useful
in preventing anyone from reading Jefferson's diary. When they're not focused
on matters of state, many presidents have
devoted themselves to artistic endeavors. For instance,
Franklin D Roosevelt wrote mystery stories. FDR was a major fan
of detective stories. And while he didn't fancy
himself a novelist, per se, he did come up with a
pretty clever story, along with magazine
editor Fulton Oursler. The duo sent their story
around to some noted authors of the day, with each writer
contributing one chapter to a finished novel. The book was eventually
released in 1936 as The President's Mystery Plot,
with an unsolved cliffhanger ending, which is appropriate. FDR's final term was kind
of a cliffhanger ending. Perry Mason creator
Earl Stanley Gardner took it upon himself to
write an ending for the story and published a concluding
chapter in 1967. [JAZZ MUSIC] More familiar to modern
viewers, certainly, is President Bill Clinton's
enduring love of jazz and his skill with a saxophone,
an instrument he originally picked up in his
high school band. In June of 1992, while still
serving as Arkansas Governor and campaigning
for the presidency, Clinton made a
historic appearance on Arsenio Hall's
syndicated talk show, playing a version of Elvis
Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" before a cheering crowd. The segment also included
a discussion with Bill and his future first
lady, Hillary Clinton, and is considered a
crucial turning point in his political career. Clinton is also a big
fan of crossword puzzles and actually took a
post-presidential gig as a New York Times
crossword tester in 2004. A few years later, in 2007, he
wrote his own crossword puzzle for the paper. Readers complained,
however, that his crossword was a little too easy to
solve, because every answer was Ken Starr's a jerk. Clinton's successor,
George W Bush, found his artistic expression
not in the typewriter or a jazz ensemble, but in the canvas. He developed a post-retirement
interest in painting, specifically portraiture. His subjects have included
Vladimir Putin, members of his own family, and
an entire book's worth of noted American
immigrants, and himself standing in the shower. Not sure what kind of
day he was having there. He's also a big fan
of painting dogs. Because dogs are adorable. John Quincy Adams was
our sixth president and the son of a
founding father, making the Adamses the first
American political dynasty. And old JQA had some
peculiar personal quirks. One was a tendency to
swim naked in the Potomac River at around 5:00 AM each
morning before starting work for the day. This practice was
also actually part of a surprisingly robust workout
routine, that also included a two-mile walk back and forth
from Adams's home to the river. Although this may
sound positively scandalous to modern
listeners, swimming naked was a bit more
common in Adams's day than today, what
with modern swimwear still a few centuries off. Plus, have you seen bathing
suits from that era? No thanks. Adams didn't do much to
conceal the fact that he liked to swim around naked
in public from voters and even reported, that
on a few occasions, his clothes washed
away, and he was forced to walk after them
in his birthday suit. Not sure if that would help
or hurt his election chances in the smartphone era. [MUSIC PLAYING] President Theodore
Roosevelt's hobby would also likely prove
unfashionable in today's world. He was a proud and dedicated
big game hunter, taking out his first birds during a
family trip to Egypt at age 12 and famously turning
everything from a Bighorn sheep to a 1,200 pound grizzly
bear into personal trophies. Basically, if it could be
stuffed and mounted on a wall, Teddy Roosevelt would do
everything in his power to make that happen. Not surprisingly, he was also
a passionate conservationist, using his authority as
president to protect over 230 million acres of
public land and helping to jump start the American
environmental movement. If hunting is your
passion, you've got to make sure you
have animals to hunt. And if all that wasn't
enough, Roosevelt was also a great lover
of boxing and continued to compete in the ring
well into his presidential administration. He was eventually
forced to stop, though, after an artillery captain
permanently damaged his eye, but also, probably
because he was president, and there's lots to do. It can't all be hunting
and going to parks, Teddy. Abraham Lincoln was no
stranger to the squared circle. Growing up in New
Salem, Illinois, Lincoln developed a reputation as
a capable street fighter, although he has yet to
be added to the roster of the popular video
game of the same name. Honest Abe once took
out a noted local bully named Jack Armstrong,
who led a gang of ne'er do wells named the
Clary's Grove Boys, which is a terrific name for a
gang of ne'er do wells. Lincoln's love of
wrestling was actually brought up several times
during his famous debates against Stephen Douglas,
as was his reputation as a capable athlete. Sadly, it never escalated to
Lincoln dispatching Douglas with a tombstone pile driver. [MUSIC PLAYING] Richard Nixon was not
well-known for his athletics. Because if he could
dunk a basketball, that would overtake
Watergate as the discussion point of his presidency. However, Nixon was an adept
competitor in other areas. Nixon was a lifelong fan of
card games, particularly poker. While serving in the
Navy during World War II, he developed the reputation
as the best bluffer in the US military service. Well, that makes a lot of sense. It was said that he
raised some of the money to fund his 1946 campaign for
the House of Representatives by winning big hands
against his fellow sailors. Some presidents prefer
amassing private collections to physical activity. Because it's hot and
muggy in Washington for most of the year,
and not everyone can swim naked in the Potomac. For one example, Lyndon
B Johnson actually owned a personal submarine car. The so-called amphicar was
designed by Hanns Trippel and produced by a West
German company in the 1960s, though only around 4,378
were ever constructed. It's actually the only
amphibious vehicle that's ever been put on sale
for civilian consumers, which makes sense. On land, it looked just
like an ordinary car, except that the
engine was mounted at the rear alongside a
set of twin propellers. The amphicar could even drive
itself right into the water, like a guy working
on his fourth DUI. As LBJ had something
of a mischievous side, he used this ability
to his advantage to pull pranks on unsuspecting
guests at his Texas ranch. A former assistant named Joseph
Califano famously recalled the president driving
White House Secretary Vicky McCammon around his ranch in
the car with the top down, then suddenly veering toward
a nearby lake and declaring, the brakes won't hold. We're going in. It took a few
moments in the water before McCammon realized
they were in a floating car and were likely going
to survive the ordeal. [MUSIC PLAYING] When Calvin Coolidge ascended
to the presidency in 1923, the Secret Service made him
give up his favorite pastime, riding horses. So a personal friend
gave our 30th president a thoughtful, if somewhat
ridiculous, gift, a mechanical horse. The contraption
was, essentially, a wooden barrel with a
simulated horse's head made from metal and
leather stuck to the front. And it could approximate
several gates, anywhere from a trot to a gallop. Normally, these
devices are situated in front of grocery stores
and are for children. Coolidge originally
kept the horse in his private White
House quarters, away from public view,
for obvious reasons. In 1925, though, the
machine required repairs, and word leaked to
the Boston Globe that the president was riding
an automated barrel three times a day, sometimes in his
favorite cowboy hat, and pretending it was a horsey. Coolidge's doctor had
reportedly assured him that it was helping
him lose weight, and it was good for his
liver, though maybe he was saying that because
the president was just enjoying himself so damn much. Presidents in the
age of social media have to be a lot more careful
that their pastimes aren't extremely ridiculous, like
mechanical horse ridiculous. Thankfully, Barack Obama is
something of a pop culture nerd, allowing him to relate
to those Americans who have strong feelings
about Wolverine. In addition to loving both
Star Trek and Game of Thrones, Obama is also a
major comic book fan, with a significant personal
collection of back issues. Conan the Barbarian
and Spider-Man are his personal favorites. Obama has even been
featured in some comic books over the years,
including an appearance on a variant amazing
Spider-Man cover just before his inauguration. That issue became one of
the best-selling comic books of that decade. I guess, thanks, Obama. So what do you think? Which President had the
most surprising hobby? Let us in the comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
