The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, & Stupefy

What most of us don't know about our presidents could fill a book-and this just happens to be that book! From the archives of The History Channel r comes a treasure trove of quirky presidential history that will truly astonish, bewilder, and stupefy. Like Abraham Lincoln's duel or Jimmy Carter's UFO sighting . . . and let's not forget about the president who went skinny-dipping in the Potomac every day!That's the kind of presidential history you'll find in The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told: One hundred little-known stories to make you shake your head in wonder. If you want to find out how "Hail to the Chief" came to be the president's song, why the Oval Office isn't square, which president saved the game of football, and why Washington, D.C., could have been named Hertburn, this is the book for you.Did You Know About:The custody battle that made George Washington an American?The counterfeiters who tried to steal Lincoln's body?The woman who brought down Andrew Jackson's cabinet?The man who was president for a day?You know what makes the presidents famous, but it's the stuff you don't know that makes them interesting. A feast of fascinating presidential tidbits awaits.

The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told
100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy

Chapter One

1620

Man Overboard!

A rescue at sea with a profound impact on three future presidents.

A powerful storm battered the Mayflower as it carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic. The wind and waves were nothing short of ferocious. When a young passenger named John Howland came up on deck, the force of the storm swept him into the sea, where he seemed sure to perish beneath the boiling waves.

Fate was kind to John Howland. He just managed to grab a rope trailing from the ship and hold on for dear life. His head disappeared below the surface, but men on deck hauled up the rope until he was alongside the ship, and then fished him out with a boat hook. "Though he was something ill with it," reported another passenger, "he lived many years after."

By that slender thread hang three presidencies.

Watching from the deck of the Mayflower that day was a twelve-year-old girl named Elizabeth Tilley. She and John Howland eventually married. They populated the New World with ten children, eighty-two grandchildren, and descendants too numerous to count.

Among them were three presidents of the United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the two George Bushes. All of whom might never have been born if their ancestor hadn't been plucked from the death grip of a vengeful ocean.

The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told
100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy. Copyright © by Rick Beyer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy by Rick Beyer
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