10 Presidential Mysteries That Are Still Unsolved

There’s no shortage of mysteries and unsolved uncertainties when it comes to the various presidents who have run the United States. Every single term, in fact, it seems like more mysteries crop up. Of course, you can attribute many of those to conspiracy theories and the like. And hey, who are we to say whether those conspiracy theories are true or not? After all, stranger things have happened…

Anyway, conspiracy theories involving various presidents could be their own list, obviously. But before we get too far out of line thinking about all that, let’s get back to our focus today: unsolved mysteries. Conspiracy or not, these ten mysteries are linked to events that occurred to various American presidents while they were in office. And yet, even though these incidents occurred decades (and sometimes centuries) ago, they’ve still never been solved. Think we’ll ever know the truth here?

Related: 10 Unsettling Unsolved Mysteries from the Old West

10 Actually a Canadian?

Much was made of Barack Obama’s citizenship (or, to hear certain political groups and conspiratorial skeptics tell it, the lack thereof) when he first ran for office ahead of serving his time in the White House. But Barack was far from the first president to face allegations that he hadn’t been born in the country. In fact, Obama wasn’t even the one most likely to have been born outside the United States, even after the natural-born citizen rule went into place a few centuries back. Instead, it was Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president, who caught a ton of attention for possibly being born in Canada!

During the 1880 presidential campaign, Arthur’s opponents seized upon his choice as the vice president for then-candidate James A. Garfield because Arthur had supposedly been born in Canada. It wasn’t just a rumor, either. As it turns out, Republican party bosses went directly to Arthur. They asked him to provide proof of his birthplace, which he claimed to his dying day had occurred in northern Vermont, not Canada. The only problem was that he never actually provided any of the proof the party had requested. So we’d have to take Chester’s word that he was born in the Green Mountain State. Unless…^[1]

9 First Gay President?

Officially, we’ve never had a gay president. Unofficially? Many people think that James Buchanan may have been the first homosexual commander-in-chief. Whether or not that’s true is, at this point, kind of beside the point. After all, Buchanan has been dead for nearly two centuries now, so whatever secret he may or may not have had about his love life has long since gone with him to the grave. Thus, this mystery will forever remain unsolved. But the theory that Buchanan might have been gay persists as a rumor today simply because there is a good bit of compelling evidence.

Take, for instance, the fact that Buchanan installed his own niece as his “First Lady” while in office. Then there’s the fact that the leader had a longtime male “roommate” for much of his adult life. Not only all that, but some modern-day historians claim that not only was Buchanan actually gay, but also his orientation wasn’t even that much of a well-kept secret after he was sworn into office in 1857! Sadly, Buchanan specifically requested that all his private letters and writings be destroyed upon his death… and they were. So, nobody can definitively prove their theories either way.^[2]

8 Not-So-Positive Self-Talk

It’s one thing to give a long inauguration speech after being elected to serve as the president of the United States. But it’s another thing entirely to make the speech so long that it actually winds up killing you! The latter tragic moment came courtesy of poor ol’ William Henry Harrison. He was elected to become America’s 9th president, and he did just that when he was inaugurated in the spring of 1841. But just 31 days after he was inaugurated, he died of pneumonia. Imagine that: You spend countless hours reaching the pinnacle of your profession, achieve your goal, and then it (and your life!) is snuffed out a month later. Brutal!

Here’s the thing, though: People at the time and modern historians alike have blamed Harrison’s sudden death on his own meandering speech patterns. At his inauguration, Harrison delivered a two-hour speech. It is, to this day, by far the longest presidential inauguration speech in history. It was also delivered outside in the freezing rain. For two hours, Harrison droned on while the ice-cold rain fell. And then he fell ill. And then he died. Now, was his death actually caused by his long speech? Or could the pneumonia have been caused by typhus, which was exacerbated by sewage-contaminated drinking water? We will never truly know.^[3]

7 First Female President?

Was there a woman running the United States from October 1919 to January 1920? Depending on which historian you talk to, the answer is a very resounding “yes.” In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. It kept him out of commission for months, but the thing is, very few people knew about it. The White House never made an official statement about the president’s health, nor did they ever acknowledge that the severe stroke had left him seriously hampered. Instead, they turned to his wife, Edith Wilson, to become the de facto president in secret behind the scenes… er, uh, we think.

The fact is nobody in Washington ever publicly acknowledged that Edith was running the White House. President Wilson’s stroke was never discussed during his term, but the show just kept going on. Historians today have tried to piece together various documents, letters, and clues from a century ago, but it’s obviously very difficult. We may never know the extent to which Edith was running the country (if she even was at all). But the conventional wisdom in the modern era is that she took the reins after Woodrow faltered. And thus, she may have been our first female president… even if the role went unrecognized.^[4]

6 Grover Goes Fishing

Grover Cleveland was officially our 22nd and 24th president, a fascinating fact in itself from American history. But for the purposes of our list here, we are focused on something entirely different today: The time he went out on a yacht and had super-secret surgery that very realistically could have killed him… and he told nobody about it. Officially, President Cleveland was listed as having “gone fishing” for a few days in June 1893.

At first, nobody questioned it. After all, being president is a demanding job. Shouldn’t he be allowed to go fishing if he feels like doing that? Well, sure. But this time around, Grover wasn’t “fishing” at all. Instead, he had gone out on a yacht to have secret surgery to remove a tumor from his mouth. The story eventually leaked later in the summer of 1893, but Cleveland denied it.

Fast forward fifteen years to 1908, and Cleveland died of a heart attack. After his death, the then-former president’s doctor finally confirmed the surgery did happen. Still, he refused to give any details about a diagnosis. It wasn’t until 1980 that a re-examination of soft tissue removed from Cleveland’s palate showed he might actually have had a non-fatal form of cancer. But to this day, no one really knows the extent of the disease or the surgery. We’re just glad he survived to continue his work in office!^[5]

5 Was Harding Poisoned?

Could Warren G. Harding have been poisoned? And even more disturbing than that, could the crime have been committed by his own wife?! That is the question that historians have been asking for a full century now, ever since the commander-in-chief suddenly dropped dead on August 2, 1923. The story is that he was being read a Saturday Evening Post article by his wife Florence when he keeled over and died. And to be fair to this mystery, Harding did have heart issues that doctors had discussed with him in the months before that.

However… Harding was also well-known to be a serial philanderer. He’d been carrying on many affairs, and the excitement of the illicit intimacy may have gotten the best of him. Or maybe Florence got the best of him! You see, after he died, Florence refused to allow Warren’s body to be autopsied by doctors. So nobody knows precisely what killed the man. And Florence’s straight-up disapproval of seeking answers has left the world wondering whether she had something to hide. She had motive and opportunity, after all. Could the First Lady really have poisoned her husband?^[6]

4 Do No Harm?

Speaking of presidents who died under suspicious circumstances, can we talk about the mystery of James Garfield’s demise for a bit? Garfield is thought to be the second president to ever be assassinated by a gunshot wound after he was struck by a bullet on July 2, 1881. He lingered on for another 79 days after the shooting before eventually dying. And when he did eventually succumb to his wounds, everybody at the time (and for a long time thereafter) just assumed it was because of the bullet that struck him. But what if everybody’s wrong? What if it was a completely survivable wound made much worse by malpractice?

Historians now believe that Garfield’s wounds, while not superficial, were absolutely not lethal. Thus, instead of the bullet causing his death, it was his doctors’ insanely terrible sterilization protocols that felled the commander-in-chief. That’s because, after the shooting, the doctors couldn’t locate the bullet in Garfield’s body. Without modern equipment, they didn’t have many options at their disposal. So, for days on end, his doctors would plunge their dirty and unsterilized fingers into Garfield’s open wound, searching for the projectile. Eventually, the president succumbed to sepsis. From the wound? Not hardly. Sure seems to us like it might have been from the brutally bad medical care.^[7]

3 Still Worried About Watergate

As if there aren’t enough unsolved mysteries and crazy conspiracies linked to Richard Nixon and the whole Watergate scandal, let’s dive into one of the best—and creepiest. Essentially, between February 1971 and July 1973, Nixon secretly recorded nearly 4,000 hours of conversations with politicians, diplomats, business leaders, and other individuals with whom he wasn’t supposed to be recording. Several of those recordings then blossomed into the scandal that eventually turned down “Tricky Dick.” There’s just one missing recording, though… and it still haunts Washington to this day.

After knowledge of the recordings became public, journalists discovered that there was one completely missing 18-and-a-half-minute recording. The occasion had been a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. But the tape contained nothing but white noise and audio feedback for 18.5 excruciating minutes. Every other tape had something recorded; this one had nothing. Zilch. Nada. Just feedback. So, what was their conversation about? What were they trying to hide? What didn’t Nixon want anybody to hear? We’ll likely never know…^[8]

2 Where Is JFK’s Brain?

There are a million unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination. We could honestly devote an entire list to that subject. Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Check back soon and see if we’ve published one. But in the meantime, let’s talk about one of the creepiest and most mystifying mysteries related to JFK’s grisly death: the curious case of his missing brain. Yep, you read that right. Sometime after JFK’s autopsy following his shooting death in Dallas, his brain went missing. And no one has ever been able to find it.

Naturally, there are a lot of angles at play here. Did some secret government agency or official steal the brain and have it destroyed for some nefarious reason? Did his brain prove or show something that people in power didn’t want the rest of us to know? Or, perhaps just as unsettling, did some creepy collector get his hands on it and decide to keep the thing for himself? At this point, six decades later, we’re pretty certain that we will never know the answer. Oh, well.^[9]

1 UFO? What UFO?

Let’s end our list here with an unsolved mystery that has to do with one of the most classic conspiracies ever: aliens! In this case, we’re talking about the infamous (possible) alien landing at Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Harry S. Truman was the president at the time. Though he may have been capable in many ways, a whole bunch of people think he seriously bungled this supposed UFO encounter.

The official story is that on one day in July of that year, the military publicly announced that an alien spacecraft had crash-landed in the New Mexico desert just outside Roswell. However, on the very next day, the government completely changed course and stated that the landing had never occurred and that the announcement had been a mistake. So, which was it? A real announcement followed by a hasty cover-up? Or a terrible mistake (or perhaps a bad game of telephone) from the very first moment?

We’d like to think we will one day have the answer to this question, but we aren’t exactly holding our breath. After all, Truman and his staff moved quickly to change course and divert Americans’ attention as best they could. But for what it’s worth, Truman himself supposedly traveled out to New Mexico to personally visit the crash site. So, clearly, there was some serious interest there. But interest in what, exactly? Maybe someday we’ll know.^[10]