President Warren G. Harding had an ongoing affair with Nan Britton, a woman who was 30 years younger than him and gave birth to his illegitimate child, in a closet at the White House. There were even rumors that Harding’s wife, in a fit of jealousy, may have been the one to end his life.
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President Harry Truman is said to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Though we was labeled inactive and he most likely joined out of social obligation, his involvement in the organization is a blemish on his reputation. Truman, however, would go on to desegregate the nation’s army.
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President Andrew Jackson had a treasure trove of secrets that he would have preferred not be discussed. He removed approximately 100,000 Native Americans from their homeland, married his wife while she was still married to someone else, and is also the only president to kill someone while in office. (He shot and killed Charles Dickinson after the rival horse breeder insulted Jackson's wife and accused him of cheating on a horse race bet.)
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President Thomas Jefferson had many extramarital affairs, most famously with a slave he owned named Sally Hemings. According to many historians, Jefferson likely fathered children as a result of their relationship. Perhaps this is why he always seemed so nervous speaking in public; he only delivered two speeches during his eight-year presidency.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson was very fond of his reproductive organ, which he referred to as “Jumbo.” It is said that when when he was asked why the U.S. was sending troops into Vietnam during a cabinet meeting, he revealed his lower region and yelled, “This is why!”
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There have been many men of questionable sanity serve as leader of the free world, but President John Quincy Adams gives them all a run for their money. Adams legitimately believed that the Earth was hollow and home to mole people, even going so far as to send an expedition underground to sign a trade agreement with them.
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President Andrew Johnson, a notorious drunk, showed up noticeably intoxicated to his own inauguration, claiming that it was due to treatment for his typhoid fever. While he was swearing in his new cabinet members, Johnson was so drunk that he had to leave the ceremony altogether.
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Though his administration was the first to see electric lights installed in the White House, President Benjamin Harrison was deathly afraid of using electricity. So they wouldn’t be electrocuted, he and his wife refused to turn on any light switches, instead having White House staff do it for them.
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Shop clerk Maria Halpin accused Grover Cleveland of violently raping her when the two were out on a date about a decade before he became president. She claimed she bore a child as a result of that night. Still, paternity was never proven and President Cleveland didn’t publicly acknowledge the child as being his.
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Until he was 5 years old, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mother dressed him up as a girl. She would put him in dresses and grow his hair to shoulder length. To be fair, in the 1880s when FDR was growing up, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for children to be clad in clothing of the opposite gender before they were 6 or 7 years old.
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