The 12 Most Fascinating Facts About Teddy Roosevelt

When young Teddy Roosevelt would have asthma attacks, his father, Theodore Sr., would take him on carriage rides to force air into his lungs. When young Teddy couldn't see a shooting target, his father gave him his iconic glasses. And when young Teddy[s illnesses would prevent him from keeping up with other children his age, his father told him: "You have the mind but you have not the body. You must make your body." Young Teddy's many health ailments would soon recede as he took up athletics, hiking, and hunting - living what he would later call "a strenuous life."

After his wife and mother died - on the same day - Roosevelt grieved in his own unique way: by leaving the city behind for the wild of the American West to become a cowboy. Roosevelt operated a cattle ranch on the Little Missouri River in the Dakotas for a few years, learning to ride, rope, and hunt. He worked alongside men who made him tougher, stating that they “took the snob out” of him. During his years in the West, he wrote several books on the subject, before returning home and running for office. "I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota," Roosevelt wrote.

While living in North Dakota, Roosevelt became a deputy sheriff. During this time, he once pursued three boat thieves through a frozen river. After capturing them, he personally took them to Dickinson for trial, rather than allow them to be hanged by vigilantes. On the journey, he watched them for over 36 hours straight without sleep - reading Tolstoy to keep himself occupied. Roosevelt wrote: I kept guard over the three prisoners, who were huddled into a sullen group some 20 yards off, just the right distance for the buckshot in the double-barrel. Note: According to the Harvard Library, the photo shown here was staged, described as “a staged image of Theodore Roosevelt keeping watch over boat thieves he, William Sewall, and Wilmot Dow captured. Sewall, Dow, and an unidentified men are posing as the thieves.”

In 1895, Roosevelt became the New York City Police Commissioner. In his two years in the post, he made quite an impact. He fired the police chief. He took on political bosses. He strongly enforced vice laws. And he created what would become the basis for the modern-day police academy. Roosevelt also made a habit of going on walks in the middle of the night, in disguise, to check that his officers were on duty. His secret midnight walks were so successful that journalists began to follow him everywhere - making the secret walks a bit less secret. “These midnight rambles are great fun,” Roosevelt wrote.

You might already know that while serving with the Rough Riders, Roosevelt led the charge up Kettle Hill during the notoriously bloody battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. But the actual details are even more insane. Roosevelt had the only horse and led it back and forth between the guns at the front of the advance. When his horse was injured - caught in barbed wire - he continued up on foot. The entire advancement of the Rough Riders up Kettle Hill was Roosevelt's call. He received no order from his superiors, as he described: On the day of the big fight I had to ask my men to do a deed that European military writers consider utterly impossible of performance, that is, to attack over open ground an unshaken infantry armed with the best modern repeating rifles behind a formidable system of entrenchments. The only way to get them to do it in the way it had to be done was to lead them myself.

Although Roosevelt was surely occupied during his honeymoon with his first wife Alice Lee Roosevelt, he also found time to sneak away on his own to climb the Matterhorn.

During his time as president, Roosevelt, on more than one occasion, went skinny-dipping in the Potomac. This was all part of his "strenuous life" ethos. He was always moving, and always active. He'd often take soldiers, foreign dignitaries, and diplomats on naked swims and grueling hikes while president. He wrote in his autobiography: I chose a route which gave us the hardest climbing along the rocks and the deepest crossings of the creek; and my army friends enjoyed it hugely - being the right sort, to a man.

Roosevelt studied boxing after being bullied as a child and continued with the sport through college at Harvard. And he didn't let a little thing like becoming president stop him from boxing - he would often box during his time in the Oval Office. That is, until he was blinded in one eye. He wrote in his autobiography: I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed the little blood vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to shoot... Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiujitsu…

Football was once a bloody, brutal, potentially deadly sport. In 1904, there were 18 football related deaths and 159 serious injuries. In order for the sport to survive, modern rules needed to be put in place. Roosevelt invited the head coaches of the top collegiate football teams to the White House on several occasions, strongly urging them to reconsider the rules of the game. He wrote at the time that his goal was not to emasculate the game - but simply to make it less lethal. By 1906, radical rule changes to the game of football were implemented. Roosevelt wrote: I believe in rough games and in rough, manly sports. I do not feel any particular sympathy for the person who gets battered about a good deal so long as it is not fatal.

In 1909, Roosevelt became the youngest former president - and was ready for his next adventure. So only three weeks after his successor, Howard Taft, was sworn in, Roosevelt set off to East Africa to hunt big game. Roosevelt and his massive team collected thousands of animal and plant specimens, which were displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as live animals, such as leopards, lions, eagles, and vultures, which were sent to the National Zoo. His post-presidency expedition lasted over a year.

In 1912, Roosevelt was running for president as the candidate of the Bull Moose Party. On his way to give a speech, his life nearly ended. A man named John Schrank fired a Colt .38 at Roosevelt's chest from a distance of 4 or 5 feet. But Roosevelt survived - the bullet was slowed by the rolled-up speech and metal eyeglasses case in his jacket pocket. Instead of going to the hospital, Roosevelt insisted they continue on to the auditorium, where he delivered the speech for over an hour. Afterward, he went to the hospital, where doctors discovered the bullet was lodged in his rib. The bullet remained inside him for the rest of his life. Roosevelt said at the time: Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

Devastated after losing his final presidential election, Roosevelt dealt with his grief by going on an adventure. Accompanied by his son Kermit and famed explorer Colonel Candido Rondon, they set off on a journey down an uncharted, anaconda- and piranha-infested river in South America known as the River of Doubt. Though the former president was warned of the risk, he insisted on the trip, writing, "If it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so.” Things did not go well. They lost several canoes. They were in close vicinity to cannibalistic tribes. One sailor died in the rapids. Another was murdered by a crew member gone mad. Roosevelt then badly cut his leg trying cross the river to free two jammed canoes. His injury led to an infection, which led to a fever. Near death, he pleaded with his son to leave him behind, but Kermit refused. In the end, Roosevelt finished the journey - albeit nearly 60 pounds lighter.