World’s Strangest

This President’s Day article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency. FDR spent his entire presidency hiding the fact that he needed a wheelchair, and he wanted a memorial that would do the same. Future generations disagreed. Four years before his death, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter that [...]

If you’re afraid of Friday the 13th (the date, not the movie), you’re in good company. There’s a certain US president who shared your paraskevidekatriaphobia: It’s also the number that prompted FDR to alter his own travel plans on any day of the week that landed on the 13th. “FDR would not depart on a (train) trip [...]