As we hope you all know by now, Wednesday is the day we publish a shorter article than usual so that our writer can tweak with some things on the back end of the site. As per usual, to make up for this we always make sure that Wednesday’s fact is so succinct that it needs little to no explantion. Today it’s about how President Calvin Coolidge once woke up while staying in a hotel to find some random asshole rummaging through his stuff and instead of using his presidential powers to have him swiftly ejected from the building with a broken collarbone, did something way more awesome.
As noted in the image above, instead of calling his security detail, who we’re guessing he fired the next day for letting some random dumbass walk into the room that the freaking President was sleeping, he calmly asked the man why he’d resorted to stealing, presumably before staring them straight in the face and saying “also, do you know who the fuck I am?”
After the man regained his composure after realising he’d just tried to rob the President he hurriedly explained that he was just looking for a few dollars for a train ticket so that he’d go home. Coolidge pondered this for a moment before asking the man to hand him back his wallet, when he did, Coolidge rifled through it before producing and handing over $32 in crisp notes. The burglar who at this point was almost certainly in the middle of violently shitting himself through fear and excitement about robbing and meeting the President respectively, tentatively reached out to take the money as Coolidge explained that it was a loan, so that he wasn’t technically a thief, just an asshole who borrowed money for train fare at 3AM.
After the two shook hands, Coolidge then told the man the easiest way to get out of the hotel without being arrested before going back to sleep. Content that he’d done a good deed for a citizen in need.
Oddly, Coolidge specifically asked journalists who found out about this story not to publicise it until he was dead because he didn’t think it was that big of a deal, he felt that he was just being a nice guy and didn’t see why it needed to be talked about or commented on. But here’s the best part, when Coolidge was later asked whether he ever heard from the burglar again by people who knew the story, Coolidge, in trademark tight-lipped fashion, would only ever say that the loan had been repaid in full and that he didn’t wish to discuss it any further.
If you want to read about more Presidential awesomeness, we have an article about the time President Kennedy rescued a man from drowning by diving into water, which was on fire, and pulling him to safety with his teeth that may interest you. Or, if you’d like to read something a little more silly, why not check out our article about how President Roosevelt had his first official White House portrait destroyed because it didn’t look manly enough.
