How Much Do You Know About Theodore Roosevelt?

Before he was a war hero and U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt was the treasurer of a social club at Harvard known as the Hasty Pudding Club. Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy were also members of the club, as were actors Jack Lemmon, Stockard Channing, Rashida Jones, and BJ Novak. The club is known for putting on shows and hosting social gatherings and cocktail hours, and is the only co-ed social club at Harvard open to members from all four classes.

One of the best-kept secrets of Theodore Roosevelt’s administration was that he was blinded in one eye. Roosevelt had a habit of inviting sparring partners to the White House to box. One night, a punch in the left eye caused intense hemorrhaging and eventually detached his retina, resulting in blindness in that eye. Only a handful of his closest confidantes ever knew about it.

Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States at an unusual location — specifically, at his friend Ainsley Wilcox’s house at 641 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York. The swearing-in happened quickly after the assassination of President William McKinley — so quickly, in fact, that there was not a Bible present for Roosevelt to swear on.

On a hunting trip with Mississippi Governor Andrew Longino, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt failed to locate any bears. His hosts then presented him with a bear tied to a tree, but Roosevelt, who found the situation lacking in any kind of sporting integrity, refused to shoot the tied-up animal. When news got out, a cartoonist satirized the situation in the “Washington Post,” and a Brooklyn candy shop owner got the idea to sell stuffed bears as “Teddy’s Bear.” Roosevelt signed off on permission to use his name in the marketing, and the bears were so successful that the shop owner was able to start the Ideal Toy Company.

Theodore Roosevelt was homeschooled until he attended Harvard, and then spent a single year at Columbia Law School before dropping out to run for State Assembly in New York. While at Columbia, Roosevelt spent much of his time writing a book on the War of 1812, and when asked about his reason for dropping out, he said, “I intended to be one of the governing class.”

There are plenty of stories that make Theodore Roosevelt sound like the toughest man in history, and his survival of an attempted assassination in Milwaukee is one of the most famous. On the way to give a speech, he was rushed by an attacker and shot, and the bullet was slowed down by a 50-page manuscript that contained the speech he gave later that night — that’s right, after being shot. Roosevelt famously said to the crowd, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” then, “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

Sworn into office at age 42, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest U.S. President in history, and he remains the youngest as of 2022. Roosevelt had been Vice President for only six months when he was elevated to the nation’s highest office, and had been elected governor of New York only two years before that. John F. Kennedy remains the second-youngest President, sworn into office at the age of 43.

One of the earliest known photos of Roosevelt shows him mourning the death of Abraham Lincoln. In April 1865, when Roosevelt was six years old, he was caught on camera watching Lincoln’s funeral procession from an apartment window in New York. Roosevelt was watching from the home of his grandfather Cornelius van Schaack, who had an apartment on Broadway in Manhattan.

Throughout his life, Theodore Roosevelt was concerned with health, fitness, and toughness, in part because of all the ailments he experienced as a child. He was frequently sick, and at the age of three began suffering severe asthma attacks. Roosevelt was treated with electric shock, massage, and was prescribed black coffee and cigar smoking. While none of those treatments helped, Roosevelt credited exercise and his love of fresh air for reducing his asthma as he got older.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was a formidable character: She smoked in public, once jumped fully dressed into a swimming pool, and had a pet snake she carried in her pocketbook and pulled out at inopportune times. She also loved wearing gowns of a certain pale but rich blue. It sparked a trend for the color, which was named “Alice Blue” in her honor. Her gowns even inspired a song, "Alice Blue Gown," in 1919.

Theodore Roosevelt was not just the first American President to win the Nobel Peace Prize — he was the first statesman of any kind to win the award. Roosevelt was honored in 1906 in recognition of “his role in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged between two of the world’s great powers, Japan and Russia.” The Russo-Japanese war took place between 1904 and 1905, and Roosevelt helped mediate the end of the conflict.

In January 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt made 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon an official national monument, declaring, “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. You cannot improve on it.” Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect important sites from commercial development, with the first such example being Devils Tower in Crook County, Wyoming, in 1906.

Officially called the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the group of soldiers led by Theodore Roosevelt in Cuba during the Spanish-American War became known as the “Rough Riders.” Roosevelt actually resigned his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1898 to take charge of a unit made up of volunteers, with backgrounds such as Ivy League athletes and glee club singers, as well as Texas Rangers and Native Americans. The group’s most famous action came at the Battle of San Juan Hill, which Roosevelt wrote about extensively after the conflict.

America’s national forest system began with the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 while Benjamin Harrison was President, but the U.S. Forest Service was established in 1905, in the middle of Theodore Roosevelt’s eight-year presidency. The organization was established within the Department of Agriculture to sustain healthy, diverse, and productive forests for future generations.

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was three years removed from the presidency, and was running for the office again. He had defeated William Howard Taft in the Republican primaries but was denied the nomination, so he left the Republican Convention to form a new Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party. The party platform included proposals for social welfare that would later be found in the New Deal.

When Theodore Roosevelt first took office as President, it wasn’t through election. In 1901, President William McKinley was six months into his second term when he was shot at the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. Roosevelt was the Vice President at the time, and was immediately sworn in.

Football has always been a relatively dangerous game, but at the turn of the 20th century, it was particularly risky. A brutal stretch of injuries and fatalities on the field led to widespread calls for the abolition of college football — or at least for changes to make the game more like rugby. Enter, then-President Teddy Roosevelt. After the 1905 season, Roosevelt helped set up a committee that established several rules that define modern football: The forward pass, in particular, led to players spreading out across the field, which limited the number of violent multiplayer collisions.

The 26th and 32nd Presidents had much in common. They both went to Harvard and Columbia Law, they both wore a pince-nez, and they both served as governor of New York state (as well as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy). This was not entirely by chance: The younger Roosevelt idolized his fifth cousin Theodore as a child, and modeled himself after the famous Rough Rider.

Teddy Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to leave the country during his term in office when he took a 1906 voyage to Panama to visit the progression of the Panama Canal. Teddy had nothing on our most traveled President, however. During his two terms in office, President Bill Clinton spent 233 days abroad, visiting 134 destinations on 55 different trips.

Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of America’s national parks, and he established five new ones during his presidency: Crater Lake, Wind Cave, Sullys Hill, Mesa Verde, and Platt. So it’s only appropriate that in 1947, a namesake national park was established in Teddy’s honor. This park is located in the Badlands of North Dakota, where Roosevelt went to hunt bison in 1883. He fell in love with the area’s natural beauty, which inspired his interest in conservation.

The Roosevelt family was complicated. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fifth cousin. FDR's wife, Eleanor, was Theodore's niece, making Eleanor and FDR fifth cousins once removed. Theodore even stood in place of Eleanor’s deceased father at her wedding. But the connections don’t stop there. FDR was related to a whopping 10 other Presidents, by blood and marriage.