5. A Very Smart Man’s Very Silly Belief
John Quincy Adams, like his father and America’s second president John Adams, was a brilliant man. Before he, too, became president, JQ Adams was a great diplomat – perhaps America’s best diplomat ever. His accomplishments included a stint as ambassador to Russia, and he served in the delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. JQ Adams also served as Secretary of State, in which capacity he negotiated the acquisition of Florida, and played a key role in the establishment of the Monroe Doctrine. He also served in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and became an early leader of the opposition to slavery.
Still, we all have our faults, and while JQ Adams was clearly an intelligent man, he had some blind spots. One of them was his belief in the Hollow Earth Theory. It was considered ludicrous even in his own time and sounded as whacky as the Flat Earth or Q-Anon strikes rational people today. As its name indicates, Hollow Earth claimed that our planet is not a solid rock, but more like a ball. It had concentric layers separated by empty spaces, that were probably inhabited by people. Adams not only believed that balderdash but wanted to prove it at the taxpayers’ expense.