Theodore Roosevelt

Legacy

In popular culture

• Roosevelt appears as a factual character in the fictional novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr. The novel is set in New York City in 1896 when Roosevelt was the city's police commissioner.
• In Chris Elliott's spoof novel The Shroud of the Thwacker, Roosevelt appears as the mayor of New York City (which he never was).
• In Scrooge McDuck comics by Keno Don Rosa, Roosevelt appears several times. Scrooge and Roosevelt met each other in 1882, and on several other occasions they meet each other coincidentally. He is credited with mentoring an adolescent Scrooge in the values of self-confidence and self-reliance.
• Stuffed toy bears (teddy bears) are named after him; his childhood nickname was "Teedie," (not "Teddie") but his adult nickname was "Teddy" (which he despised and considered improper, preferring "T.R."). Toy bear manufacturers took to naming them after him following an incident on a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902 in which he refused to kill a black bear cub. Bear cubs became closely associated with Roosevelt in political cartoons thereafter.
• Roosevelt is also depicted fictionally in Gore Vidal's novel Empire, Harry Turtledove's How Few Remain, and the movie The Wind and the Lion, written and directed by John Milius.
• His 1909 African safari was included in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and in an episode of the Disney TV animated series The Legend of Tarzan.
• In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 alternate history, Roosevelt raised an "Unauthorized Regiment" during the Second Mexican War (1881) and became a war hero. He later served as Democratic President in 1913–21, defeating the Confederate States and crushing Canada during the Great War (1914–17). He was defeated by Socialist Upton Sinclair in his historic run for a third term; he died in 1924 as the most beloved president in recent U.S. history.

Presidential firsts

• First American to be awarded a Nobel Prize (in any category) in 1906.
• On November 9, 1906, he made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. President to make an official trip outside of the United States, visiting Panama to inspect the construction progress of the Panama Canal.
• Roosevelt was also the first to sail in a submarine (aboard the USS Plunger, 1905), and first former president to fly in an airplane (October 11, 1910).
• Roosevelt was the first and only president to ever knife fight a cougar in 1901. http://www.bartleby.com/53/4.html
• Roosevelt was the first president to ride an automobile. The car was a purple-lined Columbia Electric Victoria. On August 22, 1902, Roosevelt rode through the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, along with a 20-carriage procession following behind.
• Roosevelt was also the first president to own a car.
• First President to invite a black man (Booker T. Washington in 1901) to dine at the White House.
• First President to appoint a Jew, Oscar S. Straus in 1906, as a Presidential Cabinet Secretary.
• First and only U.S. President to be awarded the Medal of Honor (posthumously in 2001), for his charge up San Juan Hill.