7 Odd Facts About Our Founding Fathers

Happy Independence Day! Since we are celebrating the birth of the United States this weekend, I thought it’d be fun for my fellow history lovers if I shared some odd facts about our founding fathers! From using elephant ivory teeth to taking air baths to importing pasta molds, the founding fathers were trendsetters in more than just declaring independence from England.

#1. George Washington only had one of his real teeth left by his inauguration.

While myths abound about him wearing wooden teeth, he did use a number of different dentures, mostly ill-fitting. He complained that they made his lips bulge. His dentures used human teeth (some his own, some bought from others, including slaves). It’s likely that they were also made of “cow and horse teeth, ivory (possibly elephant), lead-tin alloy, copper alloy (possibly brass), and silver alloy.”

#2. Benjamin Franklin took “air baths.”

When Benjamin Franklin lived in London, he liked to sit “without any clothes whatever,” as he wrote to a friend. He positioned himself next to his open first floor window in the early morning. He believed it was good for his health to take a daily “air bath” for 30 minutes to an hour. Perhaps his neighbors knew to not cross the street at that time of day? (The one time he had to share a bed with John Adams while they were traveling, they disagreed over whether to keep the window shut or open.)

#3. John Adams’s sharp tongue kept him at odds with many of the other Founding Fathers.

Adams’s insults have been preserved for all to see, since he wrote many of them in letters. For instance, he wrote about Paine’s Common Sense (which helped spark the American Revolution) that it was “a poor ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, Crapulous Mass.” He wrote about Benjamin Franklin after a shared ambassadorship in Paris that, “His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency….his Philosophy and his Politicks have been infinitely exaggerated, by the studied Arts of Empiricism, until his Reputation has become one of the grossest Impostures, that has ever been practised upon Mankind since the Days of Mahomet.”

#4. Alexander Hamilton and his son were both killed in the same place, in different duels.

Before Twitter, people challenged each other to duels at dawn…or sunset…or noon. When Alexander Hamilton blocked Vice President Aaron Burr’s political aspirations, Burr proposed a duel. They fought at the same location where Alexander’s son had previously fought a duel. Both Hamiltons died from wounds sustained during the “affairs of honor.”

#5. Thomas Jefferson loved pasta so much that he bought his own “macaroni mold” in Naples.

While it’s probably not true that Jefferson introduced macaroni and cheese to America, he did help make pasta popular in the new country. Not everyone shared his love for Italian food, though. One guest was shocked by the strange noodles which he thought at first were onions. “Dined at the President’s – … Dinner not as elegant as when we dined before. [Among other dishes] a pie called macaroni, which appeared to be a rich crust filled with the strillions of onions, or shallots, which I took it to be, tasted very strong, and not agreeable. Mr. Lewis told me there were none in it; it was an Italian dish, and what appeared like onions was made of flour and butter…”

#6. James Madison lost his first election because he didn’t follow the popular practice of giving free alcohol to voters.

Madison refused to corrupt elections in his new country by bribing voters. (He called it “the corrupting influence of spiritous liquors, and other treats.”) Politicians at the time called handing out alcohol “swilling the planters with bumbo.” His opponent was happy to supply the beer and watch the votes roll in.

Other founding fathers were not quite so scrupulous as Madison. Even George Washington’s election agent gave out so much alcohol that it averaged out to half a gallon for every vote he received for his first office in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

#7. Three–and almost four–of the Founding Fathers died on July 4th.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Monroe all died on the holiday they had fought hard to celebrate: Independence Day. When James Madison was nearing death, his doctor offered him stimulants to help keep him breathing until the historic date, but he refused. He died six days earlier than the other founding fathers.

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