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