13. The President Who Used to Be a Model
When he was president, Gerald Ford earned a reputation as the biggest doofus until then to ever occupy the Oval Office. He also had the distinction of being the only American president to have never won a national election. Ford was not elected vice president, but got the job when Nixon selected him to replace a VP who had resigned because of a scandal. Then Ford became president when Nixon, in turn, resigned because of another scandal. However, there was a time, in the days before Ford became a go-to gag on Saturday Night Live, when he was actually cool.
Long before he got into politics, Gerald Ford had been a college football star. He played center, linebacker, and long snapper for the University of Michigan Wolverines when they won national titles back to back in 1932 and 1933. After graduation, he turned down offers to play in the NFL for the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions. Instead, he went to law school, and to help make ends meet, capitalized on his good looks and worked as a male model. He was good enough to make the cover of Cosmopolitan. Eventually, he became a partner in a modeling agency.