Though it may seem like a typical tall tale of the Old West, Theodore Roosevelt once found himself in a bar fight in Mingusville, MT (now Wibaux, MT), 35 miles west of Medora. Roosevelt never specified the exact date of the event, but the incident likely occurred in the summer of 1884. That year, Roosevelt was still relatively unknown in the area and grieving the loss of his wife and mother earlier that year.
Roosevelt had been riding for his own enjoyment through the badlands and the prairies of western Dakota Territory and eastern Montana Territory for many days when he arrived at the Nolan’s Hotel in Mingusville. There, he encountered a bully who, like others had done who did not know Roosevelt well, teased him about his glasses. Roosevelt described the incident in his own words in his autobiography:
“It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don’t like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face.
…As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ‘Four Eyes,’ in reference to my spectacles, and said, ‘Four Eyes is going to treat.’ I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language… In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, ‘Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,’ and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head… if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.”
By the next morning, the bully had left town on a freight train.
Before coming to Dakota, Roosevelt was a successful boxer at Harvard. Roosevelt maintained an interest in various martial arts throughout his life, including judo, kendo, jiu-jitsu, boxing, and wrestling, practicing many of them at the White House.
nookie-monster on December 28th, 2018 at 01:40 UTC »
His Son was a super badass as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt_Jr.#D-Day
Just a tid bit:
Barton approved Roosevelt's written request with much misgiving, stating that he did not expect Roosevelt to return alive.
Roosevelt was the only general on D-Day to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At 56, he was the oldest man in the invasion,[30] and the only one whose son also landed that day; Captain) Quentin Roosevelt II was among the first wave of soldiers at Omaha Beach.[31]
Brigadier General Roosevelt was one of the first soldiers, along with Captain Leonard T. Schroeder Jr., off his landing craft as he led the 8th Infantry Regiment) and 70th Tank Battalion) landing at Utah Beach. Roosevelt was soon informed that the landing craft had drifted south of their objective, and the first wave of men was a mile off course. Walking with the aid of a cane and carrying a pistol, he personally made a reconnaissance of the area immediately to the rear of the beach to locate the causeways that were to be used for the advance inland. He returned to the point of landing and contacted the commanders of the two battalions, Lieutenant Colonels Conrad C. Simmons and Carlton O. MacNeely, and coordinated the attack on the enemy positions confronting them. Opting to fight from where they had landed rather than trying to move to their assigned positions, Roosevelt's famous words were, "We’ll start the war from right here!"[34]
These impromptu plans worked with complete success and little confusion. With artillery landing close by, each follow-on regiment was personally welcomed on the beach by a cool, calm, and collected Roosevelt, who inspired all with humor and confidence, reciting poetry and telling anecdotes of his father to steady the nerves of his men. Roosevelt pointed almost every regiment to its changed objective. Sometimes he worked under fire as a self-appointed traffic cop, untangling traffic jams of trucks and tanks all struggling to get inland and off the beach.[35] One GI later reported that seeing the general walking around, apparently unaffected by the enemy fire, even when clods of earth fell down on him, gave him the courage to get on with the job, saying if the general is like that it can't be that bad.
to_the_tenth_power on December 27th, 2018 at 23:49 UTC »
Roosevelt recalling the event in his own words is even more badass than I imagined.
diegojones4 on December 27th, 2018 at 23:30 UTC »
If you are ever in San Antonio, TX visit the Menger Hotel. It's where he recruited the Rough Riders and there are a ton of old pictures.