History books are filled with all sorts of information about America's presidents.
But your teachers may not have told you some of the strangest facts about them.
Here are some surprising quirks you wouldn't expect of American presidents.
For years, Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were known as devotees of the astrological
arts.
In 1967, for instance, Reagan was sworn in as governor of California at 12:10 a.m. allegedly
because it was an astrologically fortuitous time.
After President Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, though, astrology reportedly turned
into an obsession for Nancy, as astrologer Joan Quigley had allegedly warned Nancy that
something bad would happen that day.
Nancy began to rely more and more heavily on Quigley.
Nancy admitted in her memoir that the astrologer was consulted to help determine the president's
schedule, while Quigley herself claimed that, "through Nancy, I really had a direct line
to the president."
"I timed all the press conferences, I timed most of the speeches, I timed when he would
take Air Force One, when he would take off and when he would land."
Another astrologer, Joyce Jillson, even claimed she helped pick George Bush as Reagan's running-mate.
And here we thought that was actually magic all along!
"What I'm saying is, this type of what I call a magic economic policy, it just isn't going
to work."
President Dwight Eisenhower liked to relax by playing golf, and in 1954 he had a putting
green installed at the White House.
It should have been relaxing, except for one persistent issue: squirrels.
See, Eisenhower's predecessor, President Harry Truman, liked to feed the squirrels, so they
were accustomed to having the run of the place.
When they began burying nuts in Eisenhower's new putting green, though, the former World
War II general declared war on the squirrels, saying,
"The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take it out!"
His staff decided shooting guns at the White House was a bad idea.
Instead, his groundskeepers tried to scare the squirrels off.
When that didn't work, they started a trap-and-release program, where they let the squirrels out
in some park in DC.
It didn't really help, but it did get Eisenhower in trouble with his political rivals, who
called Ike nuts for being so hostile to his new fuzzy friends.
At least it wasn't gophers, though.
That could have gotten real bad.
"I want you to kill every gopher on the course."
"Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they're going to lock me
up and throw away the key."
"GOPHERS!"
President Herbert Hoover liked his privacy.
In fact, he liked it so much that he arranged it so all the servants working in the White
House had to pretend they weren't actually there.
Yep, it sounds weird, but it's true.
Hoover was so adamant that he didn't want to see - or be seen by -
workers that the White House staff created a secret code to alert each other when the
President or his wife were coming.
After ringing a bell, they would then dive behind bushes or hide in closets until the
It became such a tradition that the staff kept on doing it for well over a decade before
President Truman finally put a stop to it.
When President Warren Harding felt overwhelmed by the pressures of his job, he didn't turn
to golf - he turned to games.
Yep, Harding would call in a bunch of his crooked old pals to play cards while they
partied.
Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, described the atmosphere at these games:
"The study was filled with cronies, the air heavy with air, trays with bottles
containing every imaginable brand of drink, cards and chips ready at hand - a general
atmosphere of waistcoat unbuttoned, feet on the desk, and spittoons alongside."
Unfortunately, Harding was pretty bad at cards, and at one point he ended up giving away
the official White House china.
Whoops!
William Howard Taft has a unique resume in the history of American politics.
Not only was he President of the United States, he also later served as the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court, making him the only person in American history to fill both positions.
Yet, nowadays he's mostly remembered for being America's fattest president, thanks to an
apocryphal anecdote about him getting stuck in a bathtub.
So did he actually get stuck in a bathtub?
Nobody knows for sure, but we do know that he actually had a special oversized bathtub
made for himself.
In 1909, the Engineering Review published an article about a 7' 1" long bathtub Taft
had custom built and installed on the USS North Carolina for a trip to the Panama Canal.
After the trip, the special tub was removed and sent to the White House, where it remained
for the rest of his presidency.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite historical figures are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.