25. The Nutty Thomas Jefferson
When people think of Thomas Jefferson, what usually comes to mind are his major accomplishments: The Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, and establishing the University of Virginia. When it comes to controversy, what usually comes to mind is the jarring contrast between his soaring rhetoric about freedom, the fact that he was a major slaveholder, and that he had an enslaved concubine, Sally Hemings. Less known are his nutty beliefs, and other indicia that make Jefferson come across as a maniac.
Jefferson was a genius, but a nutty genius. For example, he went from a huge dog lover at some point in his life, to a dog hater who had all his dogs – and all the dogs of his slaves – killed. He used to be a close friend of John Adams, before he turned on and became his mortal enemy. He once got into the nineteenth century equivalent of a flame war with some Frenchmen who’d derided the size of American animals. To settle it, she shipped a putrid moose carcass across the Atlantic from America to Paris.