Paw Prints Anecdotes: Theodore Roosevelt

Shortly before he left the White House, Roosevelt, planning a big-game hunting trip to Africa, heard that a famous white hunter was visiting Washington. He invited the man to come along and give him some advice. After a two-hour tête-à-tête the hunter came out of the president's office looking dazed. "What did you tell the president?" someone asked idly. "My name," said the bemused visitor. "After that he did all the talking."

Before retiring to bed, Roosevelt and his friend the naturalist William Beebe would go out and look at the skies, searching for a tiny patch of light near the constellation of Pegasus. "That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda," they would chant. "It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun." Then Roosevelt would turn to his companion and say, "Now I think we are small enough. Let's go to bed."

U.S. statesman; 26th president of the United States (1901-1909). A sickly boy, Roosevelt became a tough and self-sufficient man who worked as a rancher, went big-game hunting, and fought in the Spanish-American War (1898). As president, he centered his domestic policies on his Square Deal program to improve the lot of ordinary citizens and his foreign policy on the dictum "Speak softly and carry a big stick." In his administration, U.S. influence on Latin America increased and U.S. control was established over the Panama Canal.

READ more about Theodore Roosevelt. See a photo biography of this president, as presented by the Theodore Roosevelt Association.