5. Andrew Jackson bred horses at the Hermitage in Tennessee and the White House
Andrew Jackson didn’t put up with congressional grumbling about gambling devices during his tenure in the White House. Jackson was a gambler all of his life, fond of cards, dice, backgammon, cockfights, and horse racing. Before he was elected to the presidency, he was known in Tennessee for the racehorses he bred at the Hermitage, his plantation home. As president he continued to breed horses, using the White House stables, and he kept several race horses to run them in Maryland and Virginia. He bet heavily on the races.
Jackson – who carried a bullet in his chest most of his life, a memento from a duel – was a noted equestrian himself, and rode frequently through the streets of Washington and in the countryside surrounding the then-small city. Jackson also enjoyed shooting, firing pistols and rifles at targets while standing on the White House porch. Though some have reported that President Jackson held cockfights at the White House no contemporaneous evidence of his doing so has been found, though cockfights were often held at the Hermitage, his Tennessee home.