Craig Zablo

Jake Rossen and Mental Floss present 27 Things You Might Not Know About Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt.  Here are three of my favorites and some thoughts about each…

1. HE WENT FROM WIMP TO WARRIOR.

Born on October 27, 1858, Roosevelt—often called “Teedie” or “Teddy” by friends—was a frail kid, prone to illness, asthma, and lacking physical strength. Despite his modest build, he was an avid outdoors enthusiast, and sometimes carried his fascination with wildlife indoors by practicing taxidermy. At 14, his family went on a tour of Egypt, and he traveled with his somewhat macabre tools of the trade, including arsenic. As a teen, Roosevelt put his stuffed birds aside and decided to become aggressive in his physical routine, training in gymnastics and weightlifting. Later, he would practice both boxing and judo. The intense interest he showed in combat sports made him a fitness advocate for the rest of his life.
Craig’s Thoughts:  His love of taxidermy before he was even in his teens makes me think of someone who would grow up to be a serial killer, not the President of the United States.

25. HE GAVE A SPEECH IMMEDIATELY AFTER BEING SHOT.

Roosevelt’s reputation as a “bull moose,” his term to describe anyone made of sturdy stuff, was never on better display than October 14, 1912, when the former president was giving a speech in Milwaukee and announced he had just been shot by a would-be assassin named John Schrank. A shocked crowd looked on as Roosevelt revealed a bloody shirt and a stack of prepared remarks with a bullet hole in them (above; you can see both the papers and the shirt at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in New York City). Roosevelt spoke for 90 minutes before allowing his aides to take him to a hospital. The bullet had lodged itself near his ribs and would remain there for the rest of his life.

Craig’s Thoughts: This probably more than anything else would have been enough to give TR the reputation as a tough guy.  But when you add it to the fact that he went west as a young man (Shades of Horace Greeley) and made his living as a cowboy; that he volunteered to serve in the army, that he distinguished himself in battle, that he was a decorated war hero, that he boxed (and continued to spar at the age of 50, losing sight in one eye in the process), that he was an avid outdoorsman, then you have to admit that Teddy Roosevelt was a legitimate tough guy.

9. HE WAS A MASSIVE ENVIRONMENTALIST.

A lover of the outdoors, Roosevelt made protecting the natural wonder of American territory a priority. Over his tenure in the White House, he reserved 200 million acres of land for national forests and wildlife refuges; previous presidents combined had only done a fifth of that. “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth,” he said in 1908. “But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation.

“These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children.”
Craig’s Thoughts:  I love that TR had the foresight and love of nature enough to work to preserve our natural resources for future generations.