Bizarre History

by Joe Rhatigan

  Family Matters

  If aliens invade (or just come for a short visit), we’ll want to impress them with our fearless leaders. But for every Lincoln, Churchill, and Clinton, there are at least a couple Billy Carters in the woodwork. These are the people related to the important people, the ones who show who we really are as a race: numbskulls and imbeciles, drunkards and liars, failures and egomaniacs. In other words, they are a lot more human than their overachieving relatives.

  He was a gifted student, a high-school basketball star, devout Christian, successful farmer, and—oh yeah—president of the United States. How can one live up to an older brother like that? In Billy Carter’s case, you don’t. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, his younger brother, Billy, was often in the news, and always for the wrong reasons. Known as a colorful, hard-drinking, good ol’ boy with his “Redneck Power” T-shirt, Billy first cashed in by endorsing Billy Beer, the first (and only) beer named for a president’s family member. He was then caught urinating on an airport runway in full view of the press and foreign dignitaries. He once participated in and judged a world championship belly flop competition. Finally, there was Billygate (one of the first of many “- gates” to follow Watergate): Billy accepted money from the Libyan government in return for his influence with his brother. He was eventually registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government.

  Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, was known to be slightly unhinged, and later in life she was actually institutionalized by her son Robert. For one thing, she had a clothing obsession: in one four-month period she supposedly bought three hundred pairs of gloves. She was quick to anger and often took it out on her husband: at least once she threw stove wood at him, and another time chased him out of their home in Springfield, Illinois, with a butcher knife. She also spent exorbitant amounts of money redecorating the White House while the Civil War was going on.

  Thomas Jefferson’s brother Randolph seemed like a nice enough fellow. Thomas clearly loved him and helped him out financially throughout his life. However, while Randolph, like his famous brother, graduated from the College of William and Mary, he evidently did not share his brother’s genius. A former Monticello slave, Isaac Jefferson, recalled in 1847 that Randolph was “one mighty simple man (who) used to come out among black people, play the fiddle, and dance half the night.” Some historians believe it is Randolph and not Thomas who sired children with the slave Sally Hemings.

  Sam Houston Johnson was the younger brother of President Lyndon Johnson and, like Billy Carter, lived in his brother’s immense shadow. Sam had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking, he liked talking—to anyone who would listen, particularly the press. Lyndon solved the problem temporarily by forcing his brother to live at the White House so he could keep an eye on him. When returning to the White House (which Sam called “the penitentiary”) after a night of drinking, Sam would look for some cameras, hold his wrists together as if they were cuffed, and yell, “Back to my cell!”

  Richard Nixon’s brother Don dreamed of starting a fast-food chain called Nixonburgers. He accordingly accepted and never repaid a $200,000 loan from Howard Hughes. Richard, his paranoid brother, consequently had his brother’s phone tapped.

  Neil Bush has the distinction of being an embarrassment to two presidents. As a son of one president and brother to another, Neil brought to the table shady business dealings, liaisons with prostitutes, a savings and loan scandal, several poorly run businesses, and a messy divorce that included allegations of voodoo. The historian Kevin Phillips said in a Washington Post story on Neil, “He’s incorrigible. He seems to be crawling through the underbelly of crony capitalism.”

  Ah … Caligula

  I bet you were wondering when I’d get to this guy. Of all the crazy rulers throughout history, Caligula’s the one who set the bar so high for all the other mentally unstable monarchs, dictators, and presidents out there. Caligula ruled the Roman Empire from 37–41 CE, which isn’t a long time to get your crazy on, but he worked quickly as he took Rome on a wild ride, until his own bodyguards finally had the good sense to assassinate him.

  He rose to the throne amidst the usual political maneuvering and bloodletting and was widely hailed at first as “our star.” The ancient historian Philo describes the first seven months of Caligula’s reign as “completely blissful.” He granted bonuses to the troops, recalled political exiles, threw gladiator battles for the populace, and even focused his attention on political reform. Then something happened. Some historians say he had a brain fever. Others argue that Caligula, much like his distant cousin Alexander the Great, suffered from epilepsy, and that after an unusually violent attack, Caligula was a changed man. Here’s an incomplete list of some of the crazy and cruel actions attributed to Caligula:

  Accused his father-in-law, Gaius Silanus, and Gemellus, grandson of the previous emperor, of treason and forced them to commit suicide.

  Kept his favorite horse, Incitatus, inside the palace in a stable carved out of ivory. He threw parties in the horse’s name and the horse dined with the guests. His attempts to install his horse as a priest and consultant are usually seen today as attempts at humor and mockery.

  Had hundreds of ships tied together to make a nearly three-mile temporary floating bridge so he could ride across the Bay of Naples on horseback, which he did for two straight days. Why? Supposedly as a child, a seer said he had no more chance of becoming emperor than of crossing the bay of Baiae on horseback. He showed them!

  Announced he was a god and ordered the building of temples and statues in his honor. He sought to force the Jews to worship him and even ordered statues of himself to be placed in the Temple of Jerusalem. (These plans were wisely never carried out.) He was known to dress up as Apollo, Mercury, and even Venus.

  Opened a brothel in the imperial palace.

  Used spectators as lion bait when the games he was throwing ran out of criminals. Five rows of fans were pulled into the arena and devoured.

  Declared war on Poseidon, god of the ocean, and brought back chests full of worthless seashells as booty.

  Beat a citizen who insulted him with a heavy chain—every day for three months. He only stopped because the man had become so gangrenous that he smelled horribly. So Caligula had him beheaded.

  Tortured countless people. He was partial to sawing people by filleting them at the spine. Or he’d restrain a prisoner upside down and chew on his testicles while the prisoner was still in ownership of them.

  Most likely committed incest with all three of his sisters. When one of his sisters died, he had her deified.

  SIDE NOTE: Caligula, whose real name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was nicknamed “Caligula” as a baby by Roman soldiers. His father, the general Germanicus, would take the young boy with him on military campaigns and dress him up in a miniature soldier’s uniform. The soldiers called him “little soldier’s boot,” or Caligula.

  An Emperor’s Appetite

  Justin II, Byzantine Emperor from 565–578 CE, had a lot on his plate. War (most of it disastrous for his empire), political restlessness, and financial ruin finally took a toll on Justin, and he cracked. Before abdicating the throne, he had taken to biting his attendants while being pulled through his palace on a wheeled throne. In fact, rumor has it he didn’t just like biting people—he also liked eating them.

  The Fairy-Tale King

  Most likely not mad—merely eccentric—Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, ruled from 1864 until his death in 1886. He hated public functions, insisting on watching full-scale operatic performances by himself because he didn’t like people staring at him. He liked traveling the countryside to converse with the common folk he met along the way. He also used all of his personal fortune to build several elaborate, fairy-tale castles. Ludwig built the Residenz Palace in Munich, complete with an elaborate winter garden with a lake on the roof; New Swan Stone Castle, a Romanesque fortress in his hometown of Hohenschwangau, featuring wall paintings depicting scenes f
rom Wagner’s operas; Linderhof Castle, an ornate neo-French rococo-style palace; and Herrenchiemsee, a replica of Louis XIV’s seven hundred–room palace at Versailles that was never finished because Ludwig ran out of money. He also had plans for several other over-the-top palaces.

  Ludwig racked up millions in personal debt, and that, along with his eccentricities, was enough for conspirators to seek to get rid of him. A laundry list of bizarre behavior was compiled (including childish table manners, making his groomsmen dance naked at moonlit picnics, and talking to imaginary friends), doctors were engaged to pronounce Ludwig insane, and on June 10, 1886, a government commission deposed the king. By the thirteenth, he was dead. To this day, no one knows if he committed suicide or was murdered. He is remembered favorably today, especially by Germany’s tourist industry.

  SIDE NOTE: Ludwig’s brother Otto became king next; however, he never truly ruled because he suffered from severe mental illness. I can’t verify this story, but it’s too good to pass up. The insane king-in-name-only supposedly started each day by shooting a peasant. His attendants, not wanting to upset him but not wanting to make a daily sacrifice either, made sure the pistol was loaded with blanks, and then they’d dress someone up like a peasant and have them drop dramatically to the ground after the shot.

  Quick Comebacks

  While campaigning for the presidency, someone once threw a cabbage at William Howard Taft. He quickly responded, “I see that one of my adversaries has lost his head.”

  Dorothy Parker, seated next to President Calvin Coolidge at a dinner, supposedly remarked, “Mr. Coolidge, I’ve made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you.” He replied, “You lose.” Upon his death, Parker was said to have remarked, “How can they tell?”

  During the Civil War, President Lincoln was annoyed at general George McClellan’s hesitancy to engage the enemy. Lincoln wrote to him, “If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”

  “When the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” —Richard Nixon

  “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a Cabinet meeting.”—Ronald Reagan

  “I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.”—Jimmy Carter

  The Blunder of the World

  Frederick II of Hehenstaufen was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages. He was known as the Wonder of the World for his incredible knowledge and curiosity, love of literature and science, his skeptical views about religion, and for his ability to speak at least six languages. While ruling much of Europe and throwing together the occasional Crusade, he had time for indulging his curiosity with some fairly cruel (even by Middle Ages standards) science experiments.

  As a linguist, he wished to know whether people were born with a natural language that was suppressed when they learned the language of the land. In other words, what language did Adam and Eve speak? Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Frederick sought to answer this question by ordering a number of infants raised without any adults talking to them—at all. He ordered, “foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them.” The experiment was considered a failure, for “the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.”

  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.)

  Hobbies and Quirks

  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.

  Violence in the House

  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.

  More Violence in the House

  On January 30, 1798, two congressmen who didn’t care for each other, Matthew Lyon (a Republican from Vermont) and Roger Griswold (a Federalist from Connecticut), started shouting at each other. (Nothing new there.) Then things took a turn for the worse when Lyon spat tobacco in Griswold’s face after Griswold called him a coward. The Federalists moved to expel Lyon, and the House spent two long weeks debating it. Lyon apologized and the House fell short of the number of votes needed for expulsion.

  The next day, Griswold, who was obviously not happy with the apology or the vote, decided to settle the matter himself. He rushed across the House floor and, with his brand-new hickory walking stick, began beating on Lyon. Here is Griswold’s account: “I gave him the first blow—I call’d him a scoundrel and struck him with my cane, and pursued him with more than twenty blows on his head and back until he got possession of a pair of tongues [i.e. tongs], when I threw him down and after giving him several blows with my fist, I was taken off by his friends.”

  Here’s an even better account from Representative George Thatcher of Massachusetts: “I was suddenly, and unexpectedly interrupted by the sound of a violent blow. I raised my head, and directly before me stood Mr. Griswald [sic] laying on blows with all his might upon Mr. Lyon, who seemed to be in the act of rising out of his seat. Lyon made an attempt to catch his cane, but failed—he pressed towards Griswald and endeavored to close with him, but Griswald fell back and continued his blows on the head, shoulder, and arms of Lyon [who] protecting his head and face as well as he could then turned and made for the fire place and took up the [fire] tongs. Griswald dropped his stick and seized the tongs with one hand, and the collar of Lyon by the other, in which position they struggled for an instant when Griswald tripped Lyon and threw him on the floor and gave him one or two blows in the face.”