President William Howard Taft was America's largest president at 340 pounds (although he lost 70 while in the White House). It's very likely the only thing you know about him is that he got stuck in a bathtub and had to be rescued. A replacement tub big enough for four men was installed afterward. The photo above, which made the papers in 1909, proves it. Except it doesn't. The story of Taft's bathtub is usually attributed to White House staffer Irwin Hood Hoover, whose memoir was published in 1934, long after the supposed bathtub incident and a year after Hoover's death. Those who know suspect the anecdote was added by the book's editors.
But there was a somewhat similar story about Taft's 1909 tour down the Mississippi River, and how the president's quarters aboard the steamship Oleander were outfitted with extra-large furniture- except for the bathroom, because fixtures couldn't be found in time. Read the real origins of the bathtub story that just won't go away at Smithsonian. Incidentally, the tub in the photo was never installed in the White House, but on another boat that took Taft to the Panama Canal.
