Boxer, Cowboy, Soldier, President: Happy Birthday TR!
Happy birthday to inarguably the most colorful US president of all time! Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, and we talk about him a lot here because we love him so much, especially his work to promote conservation and save public lands, and that he proceeded with a 90 minute stump speech after being shot in the chest. Here are a few more reasons he is the original "Most Interesting Man in the World:"
- TR was the first president to appoint a Jewish cabinet member (Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Oscar Solomon Straus), and invite a black man (the esteemed Booker T. Washington) to have dinner at the White House.
- TR had a boxing ring in the White House, and would challenge staff members and visitors to matches. An unfortunately placed punch blinded him in his left eye during his presidency; which was kept a very close secret by only TR's closest confidantes.
- Following his presidency, TR went on scientific expeditions to Africa and South America, bringing back specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and American Museum of Natural History. During the latter expedition, he contracted a tropical fever after jumping to the river to prevent a collision of the group's canoes with some jagged rocks, and cutting his leg. His condition was so bad that he begged his small party to go on without him, and let him perish, out of concern that he was endangering them all. It was only at his son Kermit's insistence that he continued on.
- TR walked Eleanor Roosevelt down the aisle at her wedding to FDR.
- After his presidency, TR also took up the cause of women's suffrage. He delivered a famous speech for the cause in 1915 at the Metropolitan Opera House stating:
"Conservative friends tell me that woman’s duty is the home. Certainly. So is man's. The duty of a woman to the home isn’t any more than the man’s. If any married man doesn’t know that the woman pulls a little more than her share in the home he needs education. If the average man has more leisure to think of public matters than the average woman has, then it’s a frightful reflection on him. If the average man tells you the average woman hasn’t the time to think of these questions, tell him to go home and do his duty. The average woman needs fifteen minutes to vote, and I want to point out to the alarmist that she will have left 364 days, 23 hours and 45 minutes."
Photograph is a different view of TR than we usually see; a young Teddy Roosevelt in 1880 in his mountaineering attire, 21 years before he would become president. Part of the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection held by the Library of Congress.