In his free time John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, liked to wake up around 5 in the morning, walk down to the Potomac River, strip completely naked, and go swimming. Every single day. This was a sitting President skinny-dipping in the river before breakfast as a personal routine.
There's a legendary story that a reporter named Anne Royall, who could never get him to sit for an interview, tracked him to the riverbank, sat on his clothes while he was in the water, and refused to move until he answered her questions. Historians think that specific tale is exaggerated, but the reason it spread is that the core fact is 100 percent real. Everyone knew the President was out there swimming naked in the Potomac. And the swimming isn't even the strangest part. Adams kept a live alligator in the White House. It had been left with him by his friend, the French war hero Lafayette, and Adams reportedly enjoyed putting startled guests in the room with it just to watch their reaction. He was also a relentless diary keeper who journaled almost every day of his adult life for around 68 years, leaving behind one of the most detailed personal records in American history, including his casual notes about, yes, the naked swimming. So the real John Quincy Adams: up at dawn, skinny-dipping in the Potomac, keeping a pet alligator to spook visitors, and writing it all down in a diary for nearly seven decades. That's a founding father's son, and a President.
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